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Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
51–60 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#52Not if you include Asia. It's huge there, especially in Japan.
Bigger than Ruby? Really?
That is hard to say. I would lean toward "yes" because Perl has had longer to ferment there. It is a hard call because Ruby "comes from" Japan, so it is hard to make a definitive statement on this question.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#53FYI, 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…
> from Perl to Python (it's a really easy jump) I disagree. Python is incredibly restrictive when you're used to perl. I would be so frustrated if I went that direction.
Just curious, what ways you found python restrictive?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#54The Perl jobs mailing list frequently has a dozen or more jobs internationally a week. I'd say no, Perl is far from dead, despite it not having the sexy factor it once did.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#55I'd much rather search/replace a huge string in Perl than in C++. Perl's hugely optimised.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#56Learn 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.
Python's "semantic whitespace" is syntax that gives meaning to a common pattern in code. Most code that way by convention anyway. If that pattern has meaning then curly braces can be used for something else (in python's case: dictionary literals).
Hope it makes more sense now, even if you don't prefer that style.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Python's "semantic whitespace" is syntax that gives meaning to a common pattern in code. Most code that way by convention anyway. If that pattern has meaning then curly braces can be used for something else (in python's case: dictionary literals). Hope it makes more sense now, even if you don't prefer that style.
It makes logical sense (i.e. I understood the meaning of the whitespace-delineated blocks). I'm really just saying I don't prefer the style.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#58"Dead perl" reminds me of when Bill Clinton said "you just don't get it" to Bush 41. Essentially meaningless, yet devastatingly true.
So, some interesting tidbits to add to this "conversation":
1. Perl developers are older (on average) than those of other trendier languages. They were there at the dawn of the web. They are more experienced. They are also less expensive. But who wants to be an old-timer who gets paid less?
2. There is a negative feedback situ between developers choosing what technology to learn based on what companies are running on, and companies choosing a technology to run on based on what developers are learning. This sort of tragic loop is a social cancer which takes leadership and risk to overcome.
3. CPAN completely kills the competition. It might have something to do with perl, but it doesn't matter. This thing is outstanding, one of the 5 best things in software engineering... period. If you don't get this, you are deluding yourself and need to take a closer look at it.
4. Perl6 is going to blow the doors off the hinges because it is even more hacker-friendly than perl5 (which is ludicrously hackable).
5. Perl is dead to you.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#59FYI, 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…
> there are fewer libraries and interfaces and open source toolkits, etc
Um... What? According to http://search.cpan.org/, there are 85193 community-contributed modules. Okay, some of that is stupid stuff (http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Acme::Meow) but they don't make up a large percentage. Compare that to PyPI's 11199 packages and RubyGems' 15674 gems.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#60Perl was the first programming language that I really liked using. Before perl i had programmed in basic and pascal and that wasn't very fun.
One of the best aspects of perl is the rock solid runtime, they have really gotten that right. Many of the newer languages like java, python & ruby have VMs that turn belly up after a varying amount of time, but perl just keeps running.
I prefer coding in ruby or clojure and I don't really like the object orientation syntax in perl. I'm looking forward to try out perl6.