Perl 5.26.0 released

This is a really nice alternative to CI services and it makes sure that your stuff works in other environments than your standard Ubuntu LTS systems.

It's pretty much crowd funded CI and I am pretty sure that a lot of people who don't have the most common system would love to run it.

What's cool about this is that you see problems on both the platform and the library side, that one wouldn't expect.

Something similar, also from ages ago, but an anecdote I like to tell is that I used to have access to a hppa64 (64 bit PA-RISC) system and while I didn't really have use for it I as a fun project installed OpenBSD on it and ran some test suites there. Despite OpenBSD/hppa64 15 years or so ago being an alpha release Rakudo (aka Perl 6) actually compiled and was able to run its test suite. In the end this found a bug in math.floor or something like this.

The point is that something like that tends to have unexpected benefits for both sides. It's like when someone decides to compile a project using a less common C compiler. That pretty often leads to people finding bugs in the given software, because of errors or warnings emitted by that compiler. Similar things happen with different architectures, etc. So in the end cross platform software ends up way more reliable. Something that I think some projects focusing on only one OS or even just one or very few distros really miss out.

Of course reducing your project to work on just one platform might safe you some time somewhere, but often it's a bit like saying not writing tests safes some time. And usually it's really little or no effort, which results in a lot more feedback and quality code contributions (people that port a lot of software tend to be pretty good programmers).

There are many languages that are "better" than JavaScript for example, yet not many that enjoy its share of success.

Looking forward to a Perl6 stable release. It is stable but Rakudo still needs a bit of polush. Also it doesn't have the amount of modules Perl5 has. What it does have however, is precise arithmetic because numbers in Perl6 are internally represented as rationals.

https://docs.perl6.org/type/Rat

I think there are a number of reasons for this. One is that a lot more Perl code got written by non programmers (sysadmins) than Python code. People know Perl for regexes and "golf" (writing extremely short code), which looks like "compressed" (as in Closure/uglify compiled) JavaScript: Ugly.

The main thing that I disliked about Perl is something I also dislike about C, which is writing arrows. Other than that using other languages like Python didn't get me a lot.

You can and will write ugly, unmaintainable code and long unreadable lines in both Python and Perl. The main thing that makes Python look prettier seems to be forced indention, but believe it or not Perl can be indented too. The other thing probably are sigils, which are also a rather powerful feature.

There are of course different tradeoffs. Perl is more on the Ruby/JavaScript side, where people prefer expressiveness of code, where Python people prefer simplicity. And while I always for simplicity I don't think whether the community in large sets a bit more focus here or there there doesn't seem to be a great indicator for whether to choose one or the other language.

When comparing Perl with Python or Ruby, which I think are maybe other than JavaScript make the most sense in terms of use cases I think Perl influenced both of them more than a lot of programmers realize.

Despite the others being very mature I think Perl would wins on the edge of having solid modules and infrastructure. It certainly doesn't win in terms of image and popularity. What is nice about Perl is that the shortcomings of the languages have been largely compensated via modules. That includes modules that add changes to the syntax or add really big features like Moose, adding a lot around the topic of Object Oriented Programming, more than you have available in other languages.

Another thing I want to point out is, that Mojolicious is by far the best web framework I've seen so far. It's my personal opinion, but it beats everything available in the Python and Ruby world by far. And at least with Python I've used Django and Flask for multiple years, as well as taken a look at others.

The eco system in general is really good. There is a lot in regards to testing. If you really are into test driven development that alone might be a reason to give Perl a shot and be it simply to steal some ideas around this topic. That includes many modules around the topic of testing as well as CPAN Testers and other things.

For the bad side. Other than reputation, the learning curve is higher. This has a multitude of reasons. One is that Perl was designed after natural languages, which explains many of its oddities. That's why it isn't as easy to pick up as other languages. Knowing other languages simply might not help you as much.

Another is that a lot of very old and bad Perl tutorials are around. So one might want to look at something that in one way or the other mentions Modern Perl.

One might think to know and understand Perl really quickly, but it simply takes longer than knowing how to write Perl. This is why it makes a lot of sense to read Perl code from some "big people" in the community.

In terms of industry usage. I think the big names here are DuckDuckGo, Craigslist, eBay (I think), Amazon (I think).

However that probably is very outdated.

A good reason to not learn Perl is if you want a simple language. Perl simply is not that. I changed to prefer simple languages, which might be the reason I am now sticking mostly to Go and Python. However, it might open your eyes about different ways of simplicity here and there.

It's also good to know the other side and know how "simple" certain more complex tasks can be, if you just approach them with another tool.

Okay, this wasn't so much about the industry. It's certainly around, both for older and newer projects. I've seen it both in the Enterprise and Startup scene and not just online.

It's more quiet, but then most projects that have been around for a while don't have any big news. Debian, Postgres, various OSs, etc.

Oh one more reason: If you like it boring to get stuff done then use Perl. I think the Perl5/Perl6 thing is over and everyone agrees they are two different languages, so it's not like in Python where you still have so many projects supporting just a subset of Python in order to keep compatibility.

I think if you have Perl developers, which certainly exist, even in large quantities, choosing that one rather than Python certainly won't give you a big downside or so.

I think they are pretty much the same in that regard, even though I am pretty sure that neither community would agree on that statement.

I chose Python and Go for everything I do, mostly cause I haven't been programming Perl in ages and so my development setup, my muscle memory, etc. and money is all there, still I don't think other than that Python really has an edge over Perl. Again. I know people will disagree.

I haven't touched Perl in 10+ years. At all in fact. So if anything I am biased towards Python.