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Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#81

Post by phaylon »

sunkencity wrote: post #60

Perl 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…

You might like Moose (http://search.cpan.org/dist/Moose/lib/Moose.pm). It's built on top of--and is compatible with--plain Perl OO, but provides a whole lot more and has grown a nice, big community. There's more information (presentations, articles and stuff) on http://moose.perl.org/

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#82

Post by mikeklaas »

lelele wrote: post #64

The 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 agree with you about Perl, but what language do you use to replace C++, as someone who knows better? I haven't quite found anything that can replace it.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#83

Post by phaylon »

wazoox wrote: post #47
someone_here wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had checked them out about a year ago and they couldn't even draw a line on the screen :\

Weird, considering that the very well-known free game Frozen Bubble is written in SDL/Perl...

It's now also on CPAN by the way at http://search.cpan.org/dist/Games-FrozenBubble/

I'm not really a game developer or have any idea about SDL, but from the Perl feeds I read (I think this instance was from Planet Iron Man) I gather that the SDL development was recently revitalized. They have their website at http://sdl.perl.org/ and since the Latest News entry at this time is from the end of August, it seems up-to-date.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#84

Post by jlees »

berntb wrote: post #49
joe_the_user wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post: "I've done a bit of X and my overall impression of Y in was..." Reply: "References, sources, double blind studies please! Prove you know what you're talking about..." It seems like asking for references has become a far too easy way to pull karma points, even against posts which make their sources fairly clear.

Feel free to vote me down, if you're all about karma... :-) I asked because his claim went against what I've read on the subject. I don't really know, since I haven't really been working with web development for a couple of years (which is why I started with " Interesting ").

I'll vote you down for calling me he. ;)

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#85

Post by jlees »

KaeseEs wrote: post #39
jlees wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Observe the vague handwavy terms I used: I'm about 18 months out of date as I made the switch to Python around the start of 09. At the time, Catalyst was very unfriendly (a quick google - it still is) and nowhere near as rapid-accessible as Django, just because of the amount of head-twisting you have to do to get things up and running. It may have changed, but frankly I have little interest in investigating it, and I…

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.

Good to know. Should I ever feel masochistic enough to look back at Perl, I'll undoubtedly check it out.

And this reply alone is proof Perl isn't dead.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#86

Post by jlees »

leif wrote: post #40
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…

> 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.

Yeah, there are times when it's easy to be frustrated at the roundabout way you have to do certain things in Python compared to Perl; I also found the latter to be true on other occasions so it's swings and roundabouts.

My side point was really just that if you know Perl, you don't have to do much to learn Python. Another commenter in this thread says Ruby's easy to a Perl-head, but I didn't find that to be the case personally.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#87

Post by leif »

lincolnq wrote: post #63
leif wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Odd. Around 2004, I switched from Perl to Python for all the same tasks, and I barely noticed: it was a matter of weeks before I was just as fluent in Python as I had been in Perl. What's your experience been like?

I went from python to perl, I'm just imagining based on what I know of each.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#88

Post by leif »

Goladus wrote: post #53
leif wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The whole language is all One Way To Do It-ified. It's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, I just always feel a lot more like I'm part of a creative process when I'm working with perl, like it's this magic goop I can mush around and throw at anything and it'll do everything I can think of. With python, it feels more like I'm trying to fit my program into the python world, which is very nice and square and proper and everything works perfectly fine, except if I happen to want to do it the other way just for kicks, I can't. Or, worse, I can and the performance is crap for no obvious reason (or a very good obvious reason that should've been fixed ages ago by relaxing things just a little bit).

I used to be a real big python fan, now it just seems like too much training wheels. I like perl's weirdness: its global variables, implicit returns, gotos and loop labels, weird calling conventions that, while unexpected, are perfectly well documented and reliable, and _boy_ do I love its string support.

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#89

Post by leif »

jlees wrote: post #86
leif wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, there are times when it's easy to be frustrated at the roundabout way you have to do certain things in Python compared to Perl; I also found the latter to be true on other occasions so it's swings and roundabouts. My side point was really just that if you know Perl, you don't have to do much to learn Python. Another commenter in this thread says Ruby's easy to a Perl-head, but I didn't find that to be the case…

Well in general, if you're a polyglot programmer (which all Perl programmers should be because honestly, nobody in their right mind is going to let you program only in Perl all day), you don't have to do much to learn either one.

These three though, have more in common. They all have roughly C-like syntax, passable functions, simple I/O, and good vector and dictionary support by default. To me, they're all the same language in different suits (well, pant-suits in ruby's case ;-).

Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?

#90

Post by steveklabnik »

jacquesm wrote: post #43
wildjim wrote: post #32

Earlier 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 don't _hate_ Python, I just dislike it. I religiously indent my code in every language, but the significant whitespace bothers me. You can't have multiline lambdas. "There should be only one way to do it" bothers me. I always miss blocks. Reddit's blatant, blind hatred of Ruby and intense love of Python really turns me off. Guido's lack of understanding of TCO is embarassing. (though I've seen worse...)

All of these things are not dealbreakers, and I'd rather code in Python than several other languages. But I never actively want to develop in it.

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