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Why Perl?

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Re: Why Perl?

#4

Post by Mithaldu »

rhizome31 wrote: post #2

This is really just a checklist that can be applied to any language. So yes, why not Perl after all...

Honestly, the only point there that applies to any language is the "freedom" one. The rest are, with varying margins, real differentiators. Especially the CPAN ecosystem one. No other language has that.

Re: Why Perl?

#5

Post by Kototama »

Mithaldu wrote: post #4
rhizome31 wrote: post #2

This is really just a checklist that can be applied to any language. So yes, why not Perl after all...

Honestly, the only point there that applies to any language is the "freedom" one. The rest are, with varying margins, real differentiators. Especially the CPAN ecosystem one. No other language has that.

What are the differences between CPAN and, for instance, Maven repositories?

Re: Why Perl?

#6

Post by blibble »

Kototama wrote: post #5
Mithaldu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the only point there that applies to any language is the "freedom" one. The rest are, with varying margins, real differentiators. Especially the CPAN ecosystem one. No other language has that.

What are the differences between CPAN and, for instance, Maven repositories?

indeed, or pypi, or PEAR, and I'm sure ruby has something similar too

Re: Why Perl?

#8

Post by lawn »

rhizome31 wrote: post #2

This is really just a checklist that can be applied to any language. So yes, why not Perl after all...

Hmm let's see.

"Perl Programmers love their language." Sadly not true enough for many languages. Does PHP programmers love their language like Perl programmers do for example? Somehow I doubt it.

"True Freedom" Perl is free and open source and most code is too. How does that compare to Java or the microsoft stack?

"Great Community" There are a lot of great communities surrounding most languages to be sure, but it's a stretch to say that any (every) language has it.

"CPAN" How would this apply to any language? There's simply nothing near CPAN anywhere. Ruby has gems and Haskell has hackage, but they aren't comparable to CPAN in size or breadth.

"Awesome Third Party Support" Is a language simply the syntax and the standard library or could the freely available libraries and tools be counted too? In that case Perl stands out as well, there's just so much of it. Can C or Java rival it? Sure, maybe, but most others won't even come close.

"Jobs" I wouldn't say that Perl has the highest job count out there, but compare it to Scala, Haskell, Go, Rust and many other and it's probably easier to get hired.

I like Perl, it's a fun language to use, but I'm not the biggest Perl advocate in the world. But it does do pretty good in the above points and to say it's a checklist that can be applied to any language is just untrue.

If there are good or bad points that's a whole other topic. I think they are pretty good points, and we must remember that this is an explanation of why they personally are using Perl. Find another language which does better on these points if you can, cause I can't think of any.

Re: Why Perl?

#9

Post by DanielShir »

One of the main points that caught my eye while reading this was the fact that the author mentioned that Perl programmers love their language.

As a Perl hacker, I couldn't agree more, and that's the main point I guess. Sure, CPAN is awesome (there is even a module for controlling USB rocket launchers - http://search.cpan.org/~pen/Device-USB-MissileLauncher-Rocke...) and everything is open source, but the thing I love most about Perl is the fact that thought is translated into code very quickly and naturally. Something just clicks and feels right.

I suppose that's why despite being fluent in several languages, I always come back to it.

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