Bet you didn't know there was a [relatively] new COBOL-2002, either.
(If I were snarky, I would note that the next COBOL spec after that -- yes, there is one -- might well be released before perl 6.)
Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#12No technology ever goes away. Nobody is saying Perl won't be developed, just that people are less likely to use other languages for new projects in favor of newer technologies.
The article still makes an excellent point, which is that the difference between most of the 'newer technologies' and Perl is basically marketing, not any actual superiority of language design. You can write line noise in Perl, but you can also write Python in Perl. It may not be quite as pretty as Python, but as far as use in a production environment it will be equally useful.
Why not just write Python in Python instead ;)?
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#13The whole article fails to mention any advantage of Perl over the languages it's compared to (wonder why). The sooner Perl falls into obscurity, the better.
I currently code for my day job in a proprietary extension to a proprietary dialect of BASIC from the mid-80's. This language is legitimately broken, and has significant disadvantages at every turn. It has no real functions, no block-level scoping, lists are stored as delimited strings, there are no hashes, and nothing even resembling objects.
Perl has all of these things. If you're coding in Perl and you write bad code, it's your fault. If Perl has a fault, it's that it's easy to write code that you think is done, when you have more work to do if you want to develop a full-scale application. However, you can write incomplete but good-enough code in any language. (And I will always use Perl to write once-off scripts. It's perfect for that task.)
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#14...because it's holding the entire internet together?
"because it's holding the entire internet together?"
Could someone explain what this means in some detail? I hear this all the time but I could never make any sense out of it. Sure once upon a time perl was the best way to get cgi scripts running and do some web programming. Other than this piece of history, any specific examples of the "holding the internet together" property perl is supposed to have? What part of critical internet infrastructure depends on perl?
I am no networking expert but it seems to me that a lot of the infrastructure (apache, tcp/ip stacks etc) is written in C. How (specifically) does perl hold the internet together any more than any other scripting language? Or is this jusr something perl aficionados tell each other ?
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article still makes an excellent point, which is that the difference between most of the 'newer technologies' and Perl is basically marketing, not any actual superiority of language design. You can write line noise in Perl, but you can also write Python in Perl. It may not be quite as pretty as Python, but as far as use in a production environment it will be equally useful.
Why not just write Python in Python instead ;)?
Or write Perl in Perl. Some languages allow code not only "as pretty as Python", but even prettier.
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#16Hah, what's funny is that Jeff Hobbs, the author of the article, is one of the main Tcl developers.
Except, that Jeff (who used to work for me at Scriptics) is a pragmatic kind of guy and is likely to not allow his allegiance to Tcl prevent him from seeing what else is going on out there.
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article still makes an excellent point, which is that the difference between most of the 'newer technologies' and Perl is basically marketing, not any actual superiority of language design. You can write line noise in Perl, but you can also write Python in Perl. It may not be quite as pretty as Python, but as far as use in a production environment it will be equally useful.
Why not just write Python in Python instead ;)?
I like my braces ;}.
Also, Perl 5 is feature-stable, and probably always will be. Python is in this 2.x-3.x limbo right now where it's difficult to find libraries that are going to work as-is for much longer. If you write a Perl application well, maintenance will as easy as reasonably possible, which I think is the only real measure of a good language. Most of the 'ease of use' problems disappear once you know what you're doing, and the language learning curve is a relatively small part of a programmer's life-cycle.
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#18...because it's holding the entire internet together?
"because it's holding the entire internet together?" Could someone explain what this means in some detail? I hear this all the time but I could never make any sense out of it. Sure once upon a time perl was the best way to get cgi scripts running and do some web programming. Other than this piece of history, any specific examples of the "holding the internet together" property perl is supposed to have? What part of c…
I think you just answered your own question. I'd say just about every Unix box on the planet has Perl holding it together somewhere in there. What you've asked is essentially like asking "How does mortar hold buildings together any more than bricks, steel I-beams, or roofing?"
These things are equally important, and yes you could probably find a substitute, but why?
Re: Why Perl isn't Going Away Soon (Or Ever)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"because it's holding the entire internet together?" Could someone explain what this means in some detail? I hear this all the time but I could never make any sense out of it. Sure once upon a time perl was the best way to get cgi scripts running and do some web programming. Other than this piece of history, any specific examples of the "holding the internet together" property perl is supposed to have? What part of c…
I think you just answered your own question. I'd say just about every Unix box on the planet has Perl holding it together somewhere in there. What you've asked is essentially like asking "How does mortar hold buildings together any more than bricks, steel I-beams, or roofing?" These things are equally important, and yes you could probably find a substitute, but why?
"What you've asked is essentially like asking "How does mortar hold buildings together any more than bricks, steel I-beams, or roofing?"
Argument by metaphor is a lazy device. I don't see any specific "mortar like" virtues that perl has but other common scripting languages don't. In this metaphor I guess C Code would be the "bricks and steel beams".
Why can't I put a unix box together without perl on it? Is there any specific piece of perl code that has to be on a unix box to enable it to work as an internet server or router? Is there a piece of code that has to be present on a Unix box for me to deploy say Apache or for dns to work? Honest question. Looking for concrete answers.
What specifically does perl do to "hold the internet together" today?
As an aside, I remember some COBOL programmers saying COBOL (running on mainframes) underlies all business on the internet and so COBOL was the real "internet commerce " language. Sure, you can say it and it can be justified by a lot of convolutions and narrowing of vision, but the truth seems to be that if it ever was so critical it is (a) an accident of history and (b) getting less true with every passing day.
I suspect (but am willing to be corrected) that perl is not indispensable to the internet any more (if it ever was).