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Perl 6 Optimism

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Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#111

Post by orev »

kstrauser wrote: post #86

Perl Pessimism: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=perl I have happy memories of Perl, and it started me on the path that led to a nice career of Python awesomeness. Thanks, Perl! That said, I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever consider using it again. I almost certainly wouldn't use it professionally because it's not exactly going to light up a resume. Yes, there are still Perl shops.…

So many things are already written in Perl, so moving to another language just for popularity’s sake unnecessarily introduces another standard in an environment. There might be reasons a new language is needed, but sticking to Perl and Bash, if that’s mostly what your environment has, makes sense in many cases.

The popularity argument only makes sense in regards to hiring new people, which is a fair point.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#112

Post by 1024core »

kstrauser wrote: post #86

Perl Pessimism: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=perl I have happy memories of Perl, and it started me on the path that led to a nice career of Python awesomeness. Thanks, Perl! That said, I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever consider using it again. I almost certainly wouldn't use it professionally because it's not exactly going to light up a resume. Yes, there are still Perl shops.…

As a former Perl programmer, dabbling in Python, I keep getting reminded how awesome Perl is.

For example: I'm collecting some stats indexed by (small) ints. In Perl, I'd just say

    $collection[$index] = $stat;
Try that in Python when $index is not received in order.

Edit: Fixed typo; meant "$stat" and not "%stat"

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#113

Post by raiph »

simias wrote: post #8
joosters wrote: post #2

I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language. There’s no compatibility between the two. You can’t write a library that works in both versions, so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful. I don’t think there’s even any reliable way to translate Perl 5 source code. This is a vastly larger change than python 2->3, and people are still using p…

Pretty much. I used to use Perl 5 a lot but I never considered using Perl 6 and eventually moved on from the Perl ecosystem altogether. The huge advantage of Perl ~10 years ago was the massive amount of CPAN packages but in the meantime python & friends mostly caught up in my experience. Meanwhile the shiny new revolutionary Perl 6 took forever to release and when it finally did nobody cared anymore. Quoting Wikipedi…

One of the bigger features of P6 is that it can use modules written in other languages such as python.[1]

Are you aware of the compatibility with Perl 5 that I mentioned in my prior comment in this thread? If so, why do you discount it?

[1] https://www.perl.com/article/plotting-with-perl-6/

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#114

Post by raiph »

skywhopper wrote: post #31
simias wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. I used to use Perl 5 a lot but I never considered using Perl 6 and eventually moved on from the Perl ecosystem altogether. The huge advantage of Perl ~10 years ago was the massive amount of CPAN packages but in the meantime python & friends mostly caught up in my experience. Meanwhile the shiny new revolutionary Perl 6 took forever to release and when it finally did nobody cared anymore. Quoting Wikipedi…

Yeah... sometime around 2007 or so they finally admitted as much and started updating Perl 5 more regularly. But it's been a ridiculous journey. No project that starts out to rewrite a long-established and entrenched piece of software from the ground up ever ends up being a smooth transition. It's best to admit as soon as it's clear what's happening that you are doing something entirely new, and let the old project l…

> It's best to admit as soon as it's clear what's happening that you are doing something entirely new

Larry said something similar on day one.

> and let the old project live out its own lifecycle.

Larry did exactly that. It's still living out its own lifecycle and will for another N decades.

> re-using the name of a once-well-loved and established language is a bad move for both the old and the new versions.

I agree that this has likely turned out to be the case for Perl 6.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#116

Post by mrtweetyhack »

kstrauser wrote: post #86

Perl Pessimism: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=perl I have happy memories of Perl, and it started me on the path that led to a nice career of Python awesomeness. Thanks, Perl! That said, I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever consider using it again. I almost certainly wouldn't use it professionally because it's not exactly going to light up a resume. Yes, there are still Perl shops.…

I'm glad to say I have no memories of perl

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#117

Post by Steeeve »

bigbluedots wrote: post #37

Is anybody here using perl 6 in production at the moment? Or perl 5 for that matter?

I have perl5 in production and we are pushing to migrate that codebase to python - for the plain and simple fact that it's getting harder and harder to find people with any interest in perl5.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#118

Post by kamaal »

kstrauser wrote: post #86

Perl Pessimism: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=perl I have happy memories of Perl, and it started me on the path that led to a nice career of Python awesomeness. Thanks, Perl! That said, I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever consider using it again. I almost certainly wouldn't use it professionally because it's not exactly going to light up a resume. Yes, there are still Perl shops.…

>>Yes, there are still Perl shops. But no, there aren't very many of them

That's because any shop that needs to get job done quickly is a Perl shop. During my early career I even knew a architect who had sort of put a blanket ban on any Perl to be written. He was only stumped people were largely acting like pirates, were writing and running directories full of Perl code all the time.

Only a week back, I needed some stuff to be written. Talked to a Java guy, he tells me he can do it in a week. Told him to never mind. Went back to my desk and wrote in a afternoon in Perl. And we are a Java shop and write Java most of the time. But its just that Perl is unbeatable in getting things done.

And yeah Python. It doesn't even remotely hold a candle to Perl in terms of practicality and getting things done. Readability and all that, but frankly beyond that there is nothing in Python. Not even multiline lambdas, half baked, half implemented functional programming features. IO looks like somebody held a gun to the implementors head and he added it because he had to.

Some times I even find, sed and awk to be a million times more useful than Python.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#119

Post by kstrauser »

1024core wrote: post #112
kstrauser wrote: post #86

Perl Pessimism: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=perl I have happy memories of Perl, and it started me on the path that led to a nice career of Python awesomeness. Thanks, Perl! That said, I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever consider using it again. I almost certainly wouldn't use it professionally because it's not exactly going to light up a resume. Yes, there are still Perl shops.…

As a former Perl programmer, dabbling in Python, I keep getting reminded how awesome Perl is. For example: I'm collecting some stats indexed by (small) ints. In Perl, I'd just say $collection[$index] = $stat; Try that in Python when $index is not received in order. Edit: Fixed typo; meant "$stat" and not "%stat"

In Python:

    dict[index] = stat
...works much the same.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#120

Post by sampo »

ionforce wrote: post #4
joosters wrote: post #2

I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language. There’s no compatibility between the two. You can’t write a library that works in both versions, so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful. I don’t think there’s even any reliable way to translate Perl 5 source code. This is a vastly larger change than python 2->3, and people are still using p…

Should have chosen a different name for the language.

> Should have chosen a different name for the language.

I wonder if Fortran 2008 wasn't called Fortran, could it be sold to computer science people as a "fast, type-checked matlab".

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