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Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
71–80 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#72Most of my friends in bioinformatics still use Perl extensively, and it's the primary language in a couple of QA groups I know people in. I don't know that it'll ever be "hot" again, but it's certainly still a production language.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I find Python to be more stable than Perl, the one that needs multiple versions on the same system, and the one with modules that fail to compile without tweaking compiler flags.
I love Python and it's my first choice for most projects, but to say that there isn't a problem with lib versioning in Python is just plain ignorant.
The point was that anecdotal experience differs.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#74Programming languages don't really die, they just turn into zombies that everyone tries to avoid.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#75For what it's worth, a quick search on dice.com gives the following: - perl: 4448 results - python: 1988 - ruby: 1087 So I don't know... apparently there are still many jobs out there that require Perl. It may be that people use it less for new projects, though.
Here's a graph with postings for jobs.perl.org from jan/2002 to aug/2010: http://bit.ly/bFuh7x (source http://jobs.perl.org/about/stats )
Look like Rails took a big bite out of Perl jobs?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a while, maybe 5+ years ago (7? I can't remember clearly) it seemed like Perl was stagnating a little. This was about the time Ruby really seemed to take off, and some neat Python projects appeared (e.g. Gentoo Linux). Now, even though the core language hasn't changed, there seem to be all sorts of clever Perl modules appearing which take advantage of a lot of Perl's highly flexible nature. I really like Ruby mys…
> really hate Python Why?
I can't speak for him, but it looks a lot like my pre-code scribbles. As someone who takes pride in being a fleshware translator of pseudo-code to real-code, I feel indignant at the sight of executable, Englishy specification.
High praise or a heavy put-down?
Also, I seem to hold the Guy Steele languages in highest regard, and consider the rest passable toys. C, Common Lisp, Scheme, Java, Fortran .. somehow they feel real. You crack open the spec and you're quickly welcomed into an intelligent dialog with the best minds in systems programming. I read several chapters of the Java spec last night and learned more about the language in one night than weeks of "googling" Ruby. The GSL-school of specification is precise, uses a well established vocabulary, and explains the syntactic and semantic rules of the language, along with their required execution environment. Not a word is said about add-on packages, installation crap, compiler internals or how to fork the language on github.
Compare these two and see what I mean:
http://docs.python.org/reference/index.html
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/j3TOC....
See how much more detailed the Java specification is; although the language has more features, the spec manages to be much more succinct and precise. The Python spec is littered with references to "CPython" and the internals of an specific compiler.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#77There 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 i…
I'm headed this way myself. For anything more complicated than a toss-off script I start with Scala now.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's referring to Moose, which is an insanely good object system, which wasn't prevalent at all 18 months ago but is nearly de rigueur in all but a handful of cases today. It's a mashup of CLOS, Perl 6, Smalltalk and a few other things that remains consistent, Perlish and intuitive. It's also crazy extensible - just look at the MooseX namespace on CPAN to see what I mean.
How much of CPAN has been migrated to Moose, as opposed to directly calling "bless" as the docs[1] advocate even now? As I understand it, the story on interop between the two styles is "don't go there". [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/perlobj.html
I use Moose combined with non Moose OO libraries all the time and only run into troubles when they are doing some really funky stuff on the inside (The Glib wrappers were hard to tackle, but they have to be funky, since they're a C OO to Perl interface). Most of this is thanks to MooseX-NonMoose which takes care of most common things.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#79The bad news is that Perl isn't dead for sure. Languages tend to stick around for a while. For myself, I regret all the time I've spent learning and using it. Perl and C++ are languages for those who don't know better. I know because I've used both extensively. Powerful text handling facilities? Perl? You are kidding: Emacs Lisp burns it with a blow. Now down-vote me like ants gone mad. If you have less than ten year…
> I was expecting HNers to be a little more innovative.
I was expecting them to be less insulting, but you still get upvoted.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> really hate Python Why?
I can't speak for him, but it looks a lot like my pre-code scribbles. As someone who takes pride in being a fleshware translator of pseudo-code to real-code, I feel indignant at the sight of executable, Englishy specification. High praise or a heavy put-down? Also, I seem to hold the Guy Steele languages in highest regard, and consider the rest passable toys. C, Common Lisp, Scheme, Java, Fortran .. somehow they feel…
You are the first person I've encountered that thinks ill of the fact that Python reads like pseudo code.
In my mind, it does it in a way that remains succinct and strict, thus avoiding the abomination of "enlishy" code (AppleScript, SQL to some extent, etc.)