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Perl 6 Optimism

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Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#121

Post by extortionist »

bigbluedots wrote: post #37

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

My office has at least a few hundred thousand lines of perl 5 (v 5.8.0) running on legacy systems, though we've switched to python for new development.

We won't be using perl 6, and suggesting it in the office would get some good laughs out of everyone who's had to work on that codebase.

I'll still write perl when I need a quick one-off script to solve the kind of problem it's good for, like throwing a bunch of regexes at a bunch of text files.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#122

Post by occams_chainsaw »

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"

I don't think I'd want or need to try that...

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#123

Post by kstrauser »

kamaal wrote: post #118
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 s…

> That's because any shop that needs to get job done quickly is a Perl shop.

Be careful with that wild generalization. I’ve seen lots more “get job done quickly” in Ruby than Perl (but neither as much as with Python recently). I have nothing bad to say about Perl, but it’s not really defensible to claim it’s used as commonly as other languages.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#124

Post by kamaal »

bigbluedots wrote: post #37

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

Pretty much anybody using Unix is using Perl one way or the other.

Its a bit like C. The language is so neatly integrated with the OS that its hard to beat it.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#125

Post by kstrauser »

orev wrote: post #111
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.

I don’t disagree with the first part. That’s a legit reason to stick with what you have.

But yes, it is going to make hiring more challenging.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#126

Post by kstrauser »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #94
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'd advise you to remain curious beyond what's good for your resume, especially if you want to stay sharp and ahead of the curve. Perl 6 has some neat features, particularly around grammars and parsing, that make those tools easier to use for day-to-day problems.

To be sure! I’m not allergic to Perl and I like seeing the cool new stuff going on there. But afterward, I prefer to take those learnings and apply them to work I’m doing in other languages.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#127

Post by cygx »

gaius wrote: post #96
cygx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are real companies doing real work in newer languages like Swift and Go too Apples and oranges, given that Swift and Go were started with the deep pockets of Apple and Google behind them. Look at Ruby for a more fair comparison: It took 10 years to take off, stayed "hot" for ~3 years and has been in slow decline ever since.

It took 10 years to take off It’s been 18 years since Perl 6 was announced...

18 years since it was announced that language design would start. While development of the Parrot VM (ultimately abandoned) started in 2001, the apocalypses weren't all written until 2004 (never mind the Synopses), and Rakudo arguably was born that year as well, when pmichaud started working on PGE.

That's still 14 years, and it sucks for Perl as a brand, but as far as the quality of the final product is concerned, it's completely immaterial if it took 5 or 15 years to arrive...

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#128

Post by vgy7ujm »

loggedinmyphone wrote: post #107
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.…

Is there anything "suspicious" about using Perl other than it's not as popular as Python, according to Google Trends?

No. It's not suspicious or dangerous in any way compared to Python.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#129

Post by kstrauser »

petre wrote: post #93
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.…

We are one of those Perl shops. The reasons why we're still using it are: old codebase started in 2004, >95% rewritten, the language is stable, fast enough and it scaled well for our needs after we rewrote the web services using Mojolicious. I'd also pick Perl any day over PHP or Python. We also write a fair amount of Javascript on the frontend but moving the backend to Node.js doesn't add any benefits. It just makes…

That’s on the short list of “oh, that makes sense” reasons.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#130

Post by virtualsue »

cthor wrote: post #52
petre wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were numerous discussions about this and it was decided against it. Eventually one would use Perl 5 from inside Perl 6 with the "use v5" statement.

Clarification: Decided by the Perl 6 devs who want to keep the name and don't seem to care about the damage that decision does to Perl 5

It was a decision made by Larry Wall alone.Since it’s his language, he’s allowed to do that.
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