Interview with Larry Wall • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#71

Post by Mithaldu » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

stinkytaco wrote: post #31

Slightly off topic, but I've been thrust into working with some perl code and am looking for a good learning option. I like Code Academy's interface and there are also a few good Markdown tutorials out there[1][2]. Does anyone know of a similar experience for Perl? [1]: http://www.markdown-tutorial.com/#/ [2]: http://agea.github.io/tutorial.md/

The best learning option is to head to http://perl-tutorial.org and check out what the most recent things are. Reason for that is that due to Perl's sheer age and rate of evolution, many of the older learning resources are outright damaging to newbies.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#72

Post by merpnderp » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

At my current job we've started using Node.js for a lot of windows based migration jobs and shell scripts, historically where we would have used Perl. We're mostly C#, but data munging and migration is just a lot easier and faster in Node.js or Perl.

I'm curious on what we're missing out on by using node instead of perl?

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#73

Post by 2501 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

Oh, cool, finally :) Now it's the time to read it. :D Edit: have been waiting for it after seeing it on /.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#74

Post by aaronbrethorst » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

spraak wrote: post #66

PopsiclePete wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can write Perl. Okay-ish. But I can almost never read Perl. I mean, I can read my Perl, 75% of the time, but other people's Perl? Very difficult. Managers (wisely) know that a large important project isn't (shouldn't be) built by one super-star programmer who then decides to leave for greener pastures, but that it's read, often times more than its written, by a team of people. Readability > Writability. And so Perl…

> And so Perl was destined to "fail" in the corporate world, at the expense of more boring languages like Java/C#. Can you explain how Perl was destined to fail in the corporate world?

I'm up-voting you in the hope that this is an incredibly droll joke. And, in case it is: very well-played.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#75

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

forinti wrote: post #2

>Why isn't PERL more windows friendly? Really? I've had tons of fun with Perl+OLE automating the processing of Excel and Word files.

It's a historic feeling, that is no longer accurate, at all.

I just bought a new computer, and until a new flash drive arrives, I'm stuck running Windows. I installed Strawberry Perl, and my Mojolicious projects and some other stuff Just Works, like immediately, with no fucking around at all required. It is, admittedly not a huge project with a huge variety of dependencies, but it does have some XS modules among other things, and they all were functional without trouble.

My most recent Ruby project still won't run from the source tree using bundler (though it runs fine if i install the gem for the app). So, in my experience, Perl is currently doing better than Ruby on Windows. Or, at least it is a reasonable comparison. I just saw there's a new version of berrybrew, as well, so you can do perlbrew things on Windows. I'm not sure if plenv works on Windows (but rbenv seems broken, too), as I haven't tried it yet, and I have been using perlbrew on Linux, anyway.

In short: The world has shifted quite a bit when it comes to developing with Perl 5 on Windows. It's actually pretty fine these days. As I understand it, Perl 6 is also fine on Windows.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#76

Post by unexistance » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #57

yeowMeng wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sometimes you find out data file Z is itself a Perl script :)

Yep. It is often much easier (see UNIX pipes) to break a problem down into steps that can be paused / restarted, not to mention just making the logic of each piece much simpler. I've seen where one class of data (e.g. transactions on contracts) are broken down into subclasses (e.g. commercial, individual) then processed by a different perl program to be recombined into one set that is finished by another perl script.…

microservice :D

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#77

Post by TylerE » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 10:54 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #63

chubot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I see what he's getting at in the sense that Python is more regular and compositional, while Perl is more personal and "poetic" (if I'm to be charitable, I don't really like that quality in my code). But "Python has always considered itself institution-centric" is patently FALSE... as I said, if you were using Python 10+ years ago, when Perl was more popular, you would find that statement very surprising. Paul G…

>if you were using Python 10+ years ago, when Perl was more >popular, you would find that statement very surprising I am not sure why do you correlate popularity with being 'institution-centric'. The thing is that the philosophy behind Python is very institution friendly (where institution can be academic or enterprise) and Perl's philosophy appeals to a very specific hackers subculture, but none of that has anything…

You need to go back way more than 10 years for Perl to be popular. 2006 was the heyday of PHP, with Rails starting to burst on the scene as well.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#78

Post by cutler » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 12:38 AM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #72

At my current job we've started using Node.js for a lot of windows based migration jobs and shell scripts, historically where we would have used Perl. We're mostly C#, but data munging and migration is just a lot easier and faster in Node.js or Perl. I'm curious on what we're missing out on by using node instead of perl?

Read David Blank-Edelman's "Automating System Administration with Perl" (O'Reilly) and you'll see.

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#79

Post by devdas » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 12:39 AM UTC

ceronman wrote: post #41

chubot wrote: post #26

"Perl has always considered itself primarily a programmer-centric language, while Python has always considered itself to be more institution-centric. So in a sense it's a bit dumbed down, much like Java. You'll note both of those languages make their greatest appeal to managers. :-) " Huh? I was using Python when Perl was more popular, and this seems completely fabricated. He's trying to lump Python in with Java, whi…

I have been using Perl for the last 3.5 years (for work). Before that I used Python for 8 years. For the vast majority of things Python is better. Perl programmers tend to say that the language is more powerful and allow for shorter programs, but in my experience, when writing the same program in Perl and Python, the later is more concise. There are some Perl features that save you keystrokes, for example, autovivifi…

Are you trying to write Pythonic Perl?

Re: Interview with Larry Wall

#80

Post by MilnerRoute » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 2:31 AM UTC

zenlot wrote: post #47

"Which large companies are still using Perl in production? I can name Booking.com, but do you know any others?" - it's worth mentioning DuckDuckGo of course, which is quite young and chosen Perl as a way to go.

Ironically, I believe Slashdot is also using Perl.