Short answer: Yes.
Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
91–100 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#92The 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.
I'm sorry to say I should have written: "Perl and C++ are good languages to those who don't know better ones" instead. I've been able to dump Perl, but I'm currently stuck with C++ too (as an employee). Why do you think you can't replace it? What are you using C++ for?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#93Earlier 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
> As I understand it, the story on interop between the two styles is "don't go there".
Interop between Moose and legacy Perl 5 OO works just fine.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#94Perl 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, esp…
> Perl 6 is pre-release...
Rakudo Perl 6 has had 34 releases.
> It will pick up hype when it's 100% finalized....
That must be Perl 5's marketing problem then, because it's not finalized either.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#95In 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.
> ... truly modern languages like Ruby and Python have supplanted it.
In what ways?
Certainly not in testing culture, nor available libraries, nor the power of features such as language extensions or object systems, nor in flexibility.
Screencasts, perhaps?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
It was an earned compliment, given in reluctance.
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#97The 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…
> C/C++/Java/PHP/Python/Ruby? Really? I was expecting HNers to be a little more innovative
Care to explain?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#98Earlier 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…
> it looks a lot like my pre-code scribbles
Absolutely, and I mostly write ruby. I actually love that about python. But it feels optimized for writing code with a pen, not with a keyboard. Come to think of it, I don't prefer either for the reading of other's code. But ruby and perl seem to flow from my keys much more naturally than python.
Maybe if I switch from vi to emacs I'll change my tune? ;)
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#99There are some big and new projects in Perl out there (BBC iPlayer for one – which is an enormously high-traffic site).
The real issue is that a language dies when new people stop learning it. Python's the language-du-jour of programming education (and has a strong position in science as a Matlab replacement, thanks to Numpy), Ruby's got Rails to give it momentum, PHP has Wordpress and Drupal as gateway drugs, Clojure and Scala are the JVM's great hopes, F# is the CLR's, and C#, Java and C++ will give you access to a lot of jobs.
Where are the new Perl programmers – in bulk – going to come from?
Re: Ask HN: Is Perl dead?
#100The 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…
> C/C++/Java/PHP/Python/Ruby? Really? I was expecting HNers to be a little more innovative Care to explain?
Sorry. I should have deleted Python, Ruby - and maybe PHP for close to the metal web programming - after having copied the line. Regarding C/C++/Java, I was expecting HNers to prefer more agile languages and/or exploiting some other language's features to gain a competitive advantage.