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Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

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Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#51

Post by kamaal »

draegtun wrote: post #45
mey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When ever I drop in to write sysadmin scripts, I choose ruby, python or powershell depending on the platform. I never choose bash/dos batch/perl anymore. Granted I'm a developer who does sysadmin on the side. Edit: (Python on ubuntu, Powershell on windows, ruby on everything else. Python on ubuntu since it's there out of the box)

I'm also a developer who still does sysadmin on the side (and probably far too much for my liking!) and I always write my scripts in Perl or bash. And from what i've seen and anecdotally this still seems to be the common case (Java & Perl are the main languages used by companies in the City of London).

Actually nothing ever truly replaces those classic tools bash/awk/sed/perl.

But every now and then you will see being compared with a . And then told since the is a little famous now, its likely to replace the and that actually proves is dead and is actually going to replace the in the future.

Then suddenly expect a stream of tweets, blog posts and forum discussions on how useless .

Please replace by "Perl","SQL","Php".

Please replace by "Python","Ruby","Tcl","NoSQL","Django"..

Please replace by Google search stats or Tiobe(Which is the same ,but presented differently metric).

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#52

Post by draegtun »

kamaal wrote: post #51
draegtun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a developer who still does sysadmin on the side (and probably far too much for my liking!) and I always write my scripts in Perl or bash. And from what i've seen and anecdotally this still seems to be the common case (Java & Perl are the main languages used by companies in the City of London).

Actually nothing ever truly replaces those classic tools bash/awk/sed/perl. But every now and then you will see being compared with a . And then told since the is a little famous now, its likely to replace the and that actually proves is dead and is actually going to replace the in the future. Then suddenly expect a stream of tweets, blog posts and forum discussions on how useless . Please replace by "Perl","SQL","Ph…

Totally agree.

While it's good to always review your tools & skills... spending lots of time looking at sparkling new things could be better focused on i) getting work done or ii) improving your proficiency with current tools :)

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#53

Post by danssig »

berntb wrote: post #37
danssig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. You're so sensitive about perl you've actually preemptively trolled your own thread.

After one hour, you'we written 5 out of 34 comments dissing a language -- then you call others for troll?! Look out for the sun, I hear it might give you a grayish complexion... :-)

All my posts were objective. If you find them trollish then I'd say you're too sensitive about it for some reason. You can say what ever you want about Lisp and I wouldn't be bother, for example.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#54

Post by bazquz »

danssig wrote: post #53
berntb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After one hour, you'we written 5 out of 34 comments dissing a language -- then you call others for troll?! Look out for the sun, I hear it might give you a grayish complexion... :-)

All my posts were objective. If you find them trollish then I'd say you're too sensitive about it for some reason. You can say what ever you want about Lisp and I wouldn't be bother, for example.

Objectivity is not a writing style. Foolishness is. You don't really have friends do you ? What a pity :(

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#55

Post by cageface »

rjbond3rd wrote: post #22
cageface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, Python and Ruby have eaten Perl's lunch. All it's got left to argue for it is CPAN. The first startup I worked for, in 1999, was built entirely on Perl. At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now.

> At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now. Isn't a good choice for _what_?

Any new development, really. Don't get me wrong. I think Perl was a brilliant piece of language engineering in its day and its influence on subsequent "scripting" languages is unmistakable. But why would anyone without significant prior investment in the language choose it for new work now? It's just too cryptic and idiosyncratic compared to the obvious alternatives.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#56

Post by cageface »

phaylon wrote: post #15

I hope somewhere in the future there will be a point where we can have discussions about things like this without having some people think they can just state "Perl is dead," "Python is the new Perl" or "Ruby is just better." It's fine if that's your opinion, more power to you. But that simply doesn't make it a fact. The question of the value of technology is a very complicated one. And we'll never be able to work ou…

You don't need hard quantitative data to note the shift away from Perl to Ruby, Python and PHP. It's also not a purely emotional argument to note that Ruby and Python both cover roughly the same problem domain but with far fewer quirks.

Ruby's tremendous surge of popularity was driven by a new generation of young, passionate developers. I don't see anybody advocating Perl that doesn't already have many years of sunk costs in the language.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#57

Post by cageface »

kemayo wrote: post #31
danssig wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a scripting language you'll save yourself a lot of pain by starting with Python. It's also on OpenBSD isn't it? If not, I'm sure it's trivial to install it there.

That does run into his "will not be changing drastically in the following years" criteria a bit, though. He can either learn Python 2, in which case he'll have to adjust to Python 3 when it takes off... or he can learn Python 3 and not (yet) have widespread library support. Learning 2 and then moving to 3 whenever it takes off isn't really that much work, but I can totally understand it having a chilling effect on pr…

Python 3 is hardly drastically different from Python 2. The only real pain point is library incompatibilities. Most of the big changes in Python 3 have been backported to 2 now.

Perl is worth studying for any language afficionado but if a friend asked me today which language to begin with I'd strongly recommend Python over Perl.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#58

Post by berntb »

danssig wrote: post #53
berntb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After one hour, you'we written 5 out of 34 comments dissing a language -- then you call others for troll?! Look out for the sun, I hear it might give you a grayish complexion... :-)

All my posts were objective. If you find them trollish then I'd say you're too sensitive about it for some reason. You can say what ever you want about Lisp and I wouldn't be bother, for example.

Oh please, you're not a bad troll?!

Here you did sweeping personal attacks on Perl programmers, based on some down votes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3159881

As I suggested, why don't you go to a discussion on Python, or something, and start writing personal attacks there. Then you'll see down votes...

You wrote more than 10% of all comments in that Perl discussion too... Get a life or start writing code for a hobby.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#59

Post by phaylon »

cageface wrote: post #56
phaylon wrote: post #15

I hope somewhere in the future there will be a point where we can have discussions about things like this without having some people think they can just state "Perl is dead," "Python is the new Perl" or "Ruby is just better." It's fine if that's your opinion, more power to you. But that simply doesn't make it a fact. The question of the value of technology is a very complicated one. And we'll never be able to work ou…

You don't need hard quantitative data to note the shift away from Perl to Ruby, Python and PHP. It's also not a purely emotional argument to note that Ruby and Python both cover roughly the same problem domain but with far fewer quirks. Ruby's tremendous surge of popularity was driven by a new generation of young, passionate developers. I don't see anybody advocating Perl that doesn't already have many years of sunk…

> You don't need hard quantitative data

If you make an absolute, quantitative statement, you kinda do. If you read what I said below, it's perfectly fine to feel that in your environment there is a shift happening, and I can't judge that. What I'm saying is that you can't extrapolate from that to everybody. And I'm also saying that my and many others opinions differ. All I'm asking for is the minimum respect to not basically call us liars or delusional by implying we just make this stuff up, or are too invested to see the truth.

In my (limited) experience, it is more the anti-crowd that is usually quite invested. Not monetary though, but emotionally invested. Some people in here find it very important that the world hates the things they hate at least as much.

Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?

#60

Post by phaylon »

cageface wrote: post #55
rjbond3rd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now. Isn't a good choice for _what_?

Any new development, really. Don't get me wrong. I think Perl was a brilliant piece of language engineering in its day and its influence on subsequent "scripting" languages is unmistakable. But why would anyone without significant prior investment in the language choose it for new work now? It's just too cryptic and idiosyncratic compared to the obvious alternatives.

I just want to note that I would answer, if the question would seem in any way sincere. But I don't think I could say anything that would bring you to consider that other people might have other opinions, and that they're not simply invalid because you don't share them.
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