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Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#11

Post by jwecker »

Hmm... define dead? I see a lot of cool programming concepts and computer science coming together in Perl 6- too much for me to know how to use it effectively or rationally. To me Perl is going from terse parsing and glue language to something more like Haskell- I don't think of Haskell as dead just because it's not used as a quick scripting language- I assume Haskell will keep creating cutting edge stuff that eventually filters down into "lesser" languages.

Now, on the other hand, if I had actually taken the time to become a Perl monk, and good grasp enough of the awesome stuff coming down the line and know exactly how it would fit into real-world problems- Perl wouldn't even be close to dead to me. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that are in that group. I'm jealous but not quite enough to actually try to get up to speed on it.

If it's not dead to you then I would recommend having no hesitations using it. It'll certainly be supported, and libraries... I mean, I don't know of anything that comes close to touching CPAN yet (dunno how Perl 6 fits in there). For me, though, it's dead as an alternative unless I see something amazingly compelling that I can't get elsewhere without similar learning investment.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#12

Post by phuff »

I think there's still a vibrant perl community out there, but I wouldn't say the perl community is growing. I don't know that I'd use dead or alive but maybe "plateaued".

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#13

Post by jlees »

FYI, I use Perl extensively for text file parsing and processing

Yeah, me too, but that's the issue. It's great at that. Great at quick and dirty command line hacks. Hell, most of my PhD code was written in Perl. (Something I take a perverse satisfaction in.)

But it's not great for rapid webapp development, it's probably harder to hire people, there are fewer libraries and interfaces and open source toolkits, etc - so people like me moved from Perl to Python (it's a really easy jump).

I still use my old perl scripts now and again, but even for quick and dirty stuff I tend to use Python - just in case I want to come back to it later and have a chance of understanding what the hell I wrote. :)

(Aside: One of my summer internships was on the web backend team at my university's Engineering lab. We wrote an object oriented student class administration system, in Perl. It was quite probably the most hideous piece of software engineering I've ever seen...)

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#14

Post by lsc »

amongst webapp developers, yeah. But amongst SysAdmins? Python still has a long ways to go before it reaches the stability of perl, though it's gaining. Also, CPAN is awesome. I don't know of another language that has a cpan-like tool that measures up to CPAN.

SysAdmins are slow to discard a good tool; hell, some of us still use bash. Perl 5 has been dominant for most of my career in this arena, and things will be quite slow to change.

I do see that Python is beginning to replace perl in the places where perl5 replaced bash in the earliest parts of my career... I remember back in the late '90s it was common to maintain two versions of perl on a system. Now, perl5 is stable... you almost never need more than one version of it, but I see systems (especially RHEL systems) with more than one version of python (sometimes more than two. Gah!)

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#15

Post by mx12 »

I would say that it is absolutely not, at least in my experience. In my lab, which is a bioinformatics lab, perl is still being used heavily. Perl is a great tool for dealing with text files, and little pieces of code that you need to do something quick.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#16

Post by acqq »

I also use Perl (5 of course) for text processing but also for some binary file modifications. Just for playing with algorithms I use Python. I still wouldn't like to have to use the "wrong" of them for the given purpose.

Personally I don't expect Perl 6 to have a noticeable impact soon, I've read about it and I've never thought "that's what I've been missing all the time."

Let me tell you what I'm really missing -- something even simpler than Python which would allow me to draw the random graphical things with basic interactive possibilities but with the ease of old Basic languages. I've used tkinter a few times but every time I have to make something new I just discover I've forgot all the illogical things I had to do the last time, and the old source is not of much help, I know I'll have to spend trying a lot just to make something simple, so I lose the will to even start again...

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#17

Post by philwelch »

Perl 5 is mature, and Perl 6 is pre-release, but they're different languages with the same name for branding purposes.

Perl 6 is a really promising language with tons of cool features, and some similarities to Perl 5. It will pick up hype when it's 100% finalized, even though you can use it now.

Perl 5 (popularly known as "Perl") is old enough to be on the other side of "cool", but it's a perfectly good language, especially if you use CPAN.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#18

Post by sabat »

In summary: not dead yet because of all the legacy code and because of the "Modern Perl" movement.

However: many of us believe that Perl's day has come and gone and that truly modern languages like Ruby and Python have supplanted it. Absolutely true for me; I never use Perl when I can use Ruby -- not because of political reasons, but because Ruby is more elegant, readable, and concise.

As always, YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#19

Post by sabat »

kqueue wrote: post #4

Learn Python and you'll notice why perl doesn't make sense.

Perl makes sense. It's a matter of degree of sense, and personal opinion. Python's use of semantic white space doesn't make any sense to me. But I know plenty of sane people who disagree with me.
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