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Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#21

Post by telemachos »

lsc wrote: post #14

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 qu…

hell, some of us still use bash

As opposed to what? (Do all the cool kids now use zsh? That's my best guess.) Bash just had a major release, as well as a point-upgrade to that. How is Bash now a poster child for out-of-date good tools that people won't let go of?

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#22

Post by Estragon »

...its total lack of movement is due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk.

...actually, it's probably pining for the fjords.

  http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/dead-parrot.htm

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#23

Post by berntb »

jlees wrote: post #13

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 - s…

>>But it's not great for rapid webapp development

Interesting, do you know what you talk about and have references?

AFAIK, there are some quite neat libraries and a better OO system than the usual competition (Ruby, Python, Java et al). Etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#24

Post by astine »

telemachos wrote: post #21
lsc wrote: post #14

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 qu…

hell, some of us still use bash As opposed to what? (Do all the cool kids now use zsh? That's my best guess.) Bash just had a major release, as well as a point-upgrade to that. How is Bash now a poster child for out-of-date good tools that people won't let go of?

As opposed to Perl for tasks that would be much easier with Perl scripts than with shell scripts. I know SysAdmins who do this. Perl won't be replaced as A SysAmin language of choice for while now, I don't think.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#25

Post by _cbsz »

telemachos wrote: post #21
lsc wrote: post #14

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 qu…

hell, some of us still use bash As opposed to what? (Do all the cool kids now use zsh? That's my best guess.) Bash just had a major release, as well as a point-upgrade to that. How is Bash now a poster child for out-of-date good tools that people won't let go of?

I suspect that the grandparent meant "write shell scripts".

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#27

Post by phaylon »

No, it isn't dead by a long shot. We're just busy doing stuff. Core development (including the release frequency) has been more active than it has been in years. Most of the new developments happen around things like Catalyst and Mojo (Web Frameworks), Moose (OO and Meta-OO), Plack (Web Application Deployments), KiokuDB (Object-Graph storage), syntax extensions, Dist-Zilla (release management) and others. The testing and documentation "movements" are still strong and getting stronger. The toolchain is still being improved (telemachos named a few good examples). If you want to take a look at what the community is doing, I'd suggest reading the IronMan planet at http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#29

Post by telemachos »

_cbsz wrote: post #25
telemachos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hell, some of us still use bash As opposed to what? (Do all the cool kids now use zsh? That's my best guess.) Bash just had a major release, as well as a point-upgrade to that. How is Bash now a poster child for out-of-date good tools that people won't let go of?

I suspect that the grandparent meant "write shell scripts".

Duh (aimed at myself). Right, sorry. Whew. I got scared there for a minute that I was so terribly behind the times (insofar as I still use Bash as my primary shell).

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#30

Post by strlen »

There aren't many people using Perl for web applications, but there's lot of other (and in my opinion, more rewarding) work being done in it: email security, bio-informatics, "devops" (infrastructure as code) tooling. In addition, from what I know, Amazon still uses it extensively. Generally, however, these jobs (e.g., my last one in an email security company) usually combine Perl and C/C++ rather than being purely in Perl.

That being said, Ruby is close enough to Perl to where it would not be difficult for you to pick it up and in all likelihood you'll actually enjoy it (especially if you're been writing clean, object oriented Perl). If there's a Ruby-based job that interests you, go for it.

I personally, "moved on" (for non-trivial personal projects) onto Scala and OCaml: I actually like static typing (when there's type inference to reduce verbosity) and the mixed paradigms and "terse syntax" in these languages appeal to my Perl hacker DNA. The fact they're also blazingly fast means I don't have to "go down" to C++ (really, not all that hard in Perl with XS): the scalability of these languages (being suitable to whole variety of tasks, from simple scripts, to full systems) also appeals to me.

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