Looks like peak Perl was about 2012-2014. :(
Really more around 1994, just before Perl 5 came out. Perl was a great sh/sed/awk replacement for a while..
What's better 25 years later for that sort of work?
Dwindling CPAN Releases
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Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#22It's interesting. I started Perl in around 2005, and moved entirely to Python in 2014, exactly when it reached it's peak and started to decline. Seems I wasn't the only one.
Pretty much same story for me. I started dabbling in Python 2013 and the move was final in 2014 when I had started using Ansible full time.
Before that I was a huge Perl fan. I even ran a localized version of perl.cctld in my country. With documentation in our local language.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#23I wish someone poked irssi devs to support other languages. I basically learned Perl just for it.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#24Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#25Consider this: Perl codebase is reaching perfection and no longer needs releases. After this, we get eternal Perl ;)
These are for third-party packages though, Perl might be perfect but the rest of the software world not so much... That dwindling number of submissions not only means that new libraries are not being integrated as fast as they should but also, and perhaps more importantly, existing libraries are not updated.
It's pretty sad too because I distinctly remember that one of the main selling points of Perl when I started using it in the early 2000's was that CPAN was more complete and diverse than any other scripting language out there.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#26Large Perl codebases are terrible - let it die.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#27I wish someone poked irssi devs to support other languages. I basically learned Perl just for it.
I assume you already knew and don't wish to change client -which is fair enough- Weechat supports Python and Ruby in addition to Perl.
I remember the time before Irssi, when even CLI clients regularly had remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in them (including the 1337 BitchX). Irssi was programmed with safety in mind. Either way, scripts increase attack surface.
I'm not using IRC clients right now (I quit after realizing more than 50 windows open isn't productive), but I really love both Irssi and Weechat's interface (including default themes) and CLI. Did have to finegrain the configs but the same's true about nearly any application these days.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#28Large Perl codebases are terrible - let it die.
But the small perl codebases I have are great.
I have a crontab that runs every five minutes: 30 lines that use one CPAN module, no bugs in years. The code has the kind of hackiness that's okay when it fits on one screen, and it fits on one screen precisely because of that hackiness.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#29I wish someone poked irssi devs to support other languages. I basically learned Perl just for it.
Perl is a prerequisite for Autoconf as well (not for the generated configure scripts though, thankfully). It would be nice to not have that dependency.
Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases
#30Large Perl codebases are terrible - let it die.
But the small perl codebases I have are great. I have a crontab that runs every five minutes: 30 lines that use one CPAN module, no bugs in years. The code has the kind of hackiness that's okay when it fits on one screen, and it fits on one screen precisely because of that hackiness.
It'd be better if it were in Python.