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Dwindling CPAN Releases

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Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#161

Post by orpheline »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #151
Grinnz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you had to deal with that. Do you think it would have been easier to deal with 25k lines of spaghetti garbage in a file named .py?

I think it actually probably would have been - not an ideal way to write code, but Python is certainly easier to read than your average Perl.

I don't find it so. I do both Perl and Python at work: the Perl code is almost always clearer to read IMHO. I know some people find curly brackets and sigils distracting, but to me they make code less ambiguous.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#162

Post by gmfawcett »

smueller1234 wrote: post #143
gmfawcett wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl 5.001 is really old (25 years or so), and lots has changed since then. v5.10 introduced a barrel-full of new features; other important features like the "use v5.10" syntax for supporting older scripts didn't land until much later (v5.16). Where I work, a few of our legacy systems are still dependent on ~v5.10, which can be a real pain when trying to port code back to legacy. I agree that the Python versioning pr…

The "use VERSION" syntax is fundamentally much older. It used to strictly just assert a minimum version. It also, pre 5.6, required floating point versions ("use 5.005"). In newer versions of perl, this syntax will also invoke "use feature " which allows the use of incompatible new features in its lexical scope. One example is that "use 5.12;" and above will turn on "use strict" in the lexical scope. I fought long an…

It strictly does! :) I knew that "use 5.12" implied "use strict" but I didn't know the mechanism, or that it could enable other features as well. That's pretty cool!

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#163

Post by b3b0p »

iamnotacrook wrote: post #7

I used Perl for a bit but switched to Python because I was finding it harder to work out what some code I'd written a year or so ago did than to write it again, a problem I don't have with Python.

I miss Perl. I love Perl still and would reach for it for any project I could. That said, I switched to Python because going into recent interviews and doing the white board or online assessment, Perl isn't necessarily an option. At least it's not a popular option. I do miss Perl and will happily without shame admit it.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#164

Post by markoman »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #97

I still use perl for handy one liners on the command line. E.g. I had a 1 GB log file where I wanted to generate a histogram of the intervals between certain log messages. I used a perl one-liner to extract the timestamp via regex (regexs are perl's bread and butter), calculate the diff between the previous timestamp (easy because of auto string => double conversion), use the diff value as a key in a hash of counters…

I'm an occasional perler myself and I bet that others or myself would find that code you mention to be useful, at least for the black book of snippets. Would you mind pasting?

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#165

Post by trabant00 »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #90
trabant00 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a experienced linux sysadmin point of view perl5 is as good as it gets. I've been searching for alternatives for about 10 years now, at first because my novice self was heaving headaches reading other people code and even my own. I hated perl but I hated everything else even more as I came to know them. No autovivification? Some assignments copy the data and some create references and you need to memorize the co…

Autovivication seemed like a great feature to me, back in the day, when I was getting started with Perl. Working with similar data structures in languages like Python always seemed like a chore. I had heard a few perl monks criticize it a bit, as an "end run around use strict ", but I was kind of dismissive. It turns out, that's a really apt way to describe it. It basically tosses the niceties of use strict out the w…

I mention I am a linux sysadmin but I should have been clearer: I always use perl for <100 line scripts. Back when I started and in my peer group we made clear difference between programming and scripting. I never learned programming, I don't need to as that's not my job. I write small glue scripts and that's where perl shines and I see nothing else having any chance to replace it from what exists now.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#166

Post by bmn__ »

isostatic wrote: post #80
ninkendo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post reminded me that Perl doesn’t even have a concept of a method signature, even so much as showing the number of arguments. You have to look at the next few lines to hopefully see all the `... = shift;` lines to see what you’re actually supposed to send. I mean, a lack of type annotations is normal for a scripting language, but Perl always seemed to go a bit far by not even having a standard way of showing pa…

I usually do sub mymethod($$) my ($arg1, $arg2) = @_; } Apart from on the smallest programs. So it does have a method signature (obv it's an untyped language) There are shortcuts (just like you could write "doSometing() unless $var;"). Perl does give you options. Python has different options for passing methods - passing variables, passing a dict, P.S. while looking at python method declartions, you can send variable…

> sub mymethod($$)

That does not work. Prototypes are ignored for method calls. You are expected to not abuse prototypes for signatures as they serve a different purpose.

> it's an untyped language

That's wrong even with the most lenient/charitable interpretation. Using an unexpected type of data is a fatal error.

    perl -e'$x = {}; $x->[0]; print "survived"'
    Not an ARRAY reference at -e line 1.
Type constraints have existed for a very long time, for example see http://p3rl.org/Kavorka::Manual::Signatures#Type-constraints

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#167

Post by hnick »

cat199 wrote: post #91
ojosilva wrote: post #83

I think Perl was fighting on too many fronts at the turn of the century: web, systems automation, data processing, science and a few more. Today these areas are better covered by other languages that have hefty internet buzz and corporate support behind. Perl also has no shiny features. It's just extremely dynamic and paradigm agnostic, great at shell interactions and natural at text processing (specially with regexe…

> web, systems automation, data processing, science and a few more. doesn't this apply to python, although now there are additional competitors? > reinvented itself as a web language (Mojolicious, Plack). highly opinionated and potentially flame creating , but - perl was the original web language in the CGI era, PHP pretty much dethroned it due to simplicity of server integration, rails knocked them both out of 'lead…

I've long thought if they had PHP-style inline HTML/Perl templates it would've given the language some legs. I'm pretty sure it exists (since I remember using it back in the day as a toy, just like JSP and other stacks), but it either came too late or didn't take off before PHP stole the throne.

I love Perl but I'm currently looking at around a decade of experience which is really hard to take into a new role. I'm working a bit on Wordpress now but PHP is basically close enough to Perl for me that it sits in a weird uncanny valley where I get things just wrong enough to cause headaches every time.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#168

Post by cutler »

hedora wrote: post #116
vultour wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obnoxious parameter passing in existence? The magic variables everywhere? Perl code is an unreadable heap of spaghetti, I’d much rather be figuring out unallocated memory bugs in C then read Perl.

Is its function parameter passing really more obnoxious than python, which lets you mutate the default parameter across calls: def foo(bar=Bar(1)): Unless bar is a primitive type, in which case each invocation gets the same value? def foo(bar=1): Perl wears its idiosyncrasies as badges of honor. Python keeps them hidden so they can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

"Vell, zis is perfectly normal behaviour for a python", to rephrase Gag Halfront.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#169

Post by isostatic »

yellowapple wrote: post #157
mattbillenstein wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 1 out of 100 people fail to do a thing, it doesn't mean that thing is bad...

1 out of 100 might be understating it, though. Or it might be overstating it. Who knows? As another data point, I've had very few good experiences with Python. The primary exception has been with PyQt5, and chiefly by going with Qt's conventions instead of Python's (i.e. being as Qt-like and un-Pythonic as possible).

Here's a perfect example of the python community

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54831915/python-3-5-2-in...

> I want to run this on a production Server with ubuntu 16.04. My Sysadmin tells me that I shall not use pip or github repository, because of ... something wrong with using anything but apt ... he says.

Sysadmin is right.

First response?

> sudo apt-get install python-pip

Now there are ways to convert modules to debs (or rpms on redhat style machines) so they can be managed cleanly across an estate, but that's not the python way.

Re: Dwindling CPAN Releases

#170

Post by isostatic »

mkl wrote: post #96
jsymolon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanted to use Python 3 for some processing but the Sysadmin said that only Python 2 was available for that distributions version and "didn't want to frankenstein the box"

What about installing miniconda in your home folder? How ancient is that system?

> What about installing miniconda in your home folder?

This is not how you deploy software

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