I can relate, I learned Perl when I was three and now I’m six.
Half My Life with Perl
11–20 of 139 posts
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Node/NPM definitely is on-par with CPAN. But pip isn't even close. The real deal with Perl is you not only get bleeding stuff, you get all kind of obscure and rare libraries. Its not that you can't do that in Python. Its just that the culture in Python world isn't made up of people who think about those problems or even in that dimension. Its a great language for writing all variety of apps. Perl is the og hacker's l…
I'll be frank: I think this idea that ${faveLang} is for misunderstood geniuses who truly understand computers where mainstream languages like Python are for dunces who only know how to glue together APIs is a large part of why such languages as Perl are nearing extinction. It turns out that there are people working on challenging problems in domains you've never heard of in Python -- and pretty much every other lang…
>>In the real world, the ability of a lone genius to cobble together a script in an hour is actually not that much of an edge
Any macro/multiplier is that way. You don't miss it, until some one shows you how to do it.
In the last six months alone the scenarios where I had to call upon Perl to help slam dunk a thing insanely laborious are dozens in number.
Its just that if you don't know this, or don't know it exists, you grow up being comfortable doing manual work with comfort.
Sheer amount of times, I have seen some one spend like half a day doing things which can be done using a vim macro in like seconds is beyond counting at this point.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#13I’m about to turn 40 and have been thinking if I should learn Perl or AWK or go with a “modern” solution for text wrangling on the command line. The general advice here seems to be “learn Perl while young”
Perl is a super set of all things. So go with Perl.
>>The general advice here seems to be “learn Perl while young”
Best time to a plant a tree was 20 years back, Next best time is now.
- A Chinese Saying.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#14Perl is one of those power tools(as recommended in Let Over Lambda, together with vim and Lisp), if you learn it well enough to be good at it, and early enough in your career- You really have a mad productivity work horse. Its really one of those things which save tons of time and effort. A bit like O(1) hack of the productivity world. Perhaps at the core of this just how many what we called regular programming tasks…
Just curious, what does Perl give you over Ruby if anything? I learned Ruby first, always heard it was strongly inspired by Perl (as well as Smalltalk), and it provides all the benefits you mentioned, I think.
Mostly because Ruby isn't as ubiquitous and its not closer to C, the way Perl is.
Ruby really is competing with Python in problem domain space not Perl.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#15Perl is one of those power tools(as recommended in Let Over Lambda, together with vim and Lisp), if you learn it well enough to be good at it, and early enough in your career- You really have a mad productivity work horse. Its really one of those things which save tons of time and effort. A bit like O(1) hack of the productivity world. Perhaps at the core of this just how many what we called regular programming tasks…
Just curious, what does Perl give you over Ruby if anything? I learned Ruby first, always heard it was strongly inspired by Perl (as well as Smalltalk), and it provides all the benefits you mentioned, I think.
Frankly nothing. Ruby is a strict improvement over Perl in almost every way.
I cut my teeth on Perl and I still remember it fondly. But there is no reason to learn Perl (5) over Ruby. Maybe Perl 6 is a different story though.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Node/NPM definitely is on-par with CPAN. But pip isn't even close. The real deal with Perl is you not only get bleeding stuff, you get all kind of obscure and rare libraries. Its not that you can't do that in Python. Its just that the culture in Python world isn't made up of people who think about those problems or even in that dimension. Its a great language for writing all variety of apps. Perl is the og hacker's l…
I'll be frank: I think this idea that ${faveLang} is for misunderstood geniuses who truly understand computers where mainstream languages like Python are for dunces who only know how to glue together APIs is a large part of why such languages as Perl are nearing extinction. It turns out that there are people working on challenging problems in domains you've never heard of in Python -- and pretty much every other lang…
> who only know how to glue together APIs
I think there's a deeper truth here. Perl was notoriously difficult to make C language extensions for. Languages like Ruby and Python really took off because they had a much more approachable and useful C interpreter API which; honestly, made gluing various library APIs into the language far easier. This being the key to taking a very slow and memory hungry scripting language covering a fraction of POSIX into a useful domain extension and embedded language.
Ruby did better at the domain extension part and Python was better at the embedded language part. Perl 6 went entirely the other way. I think this was the real driver of popularity at the time. This also explains why gem and pip are so different and why pip never matured into the type of product that npm is.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#17Perl is my first love, and I still whip it out from time to time to do system tasks (anything in the linux world). It is literally installed on any *nix OS, macOS included. Python is fine, but it’s not as universal as Perl. I also feel like Perl is more “batteries included” as many times I can be productive without “use”ing any libraries. It’s has been my secret weapon over the years. I’ve also noticed that most younger engineers don’t know it, and if they know any scripting language at all, it’s of course python.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Node/NPM definitely is on-par with CPAN. But pip isn't even close. The real deal with Perl is you not only get bleeding stuff, you get all kind of obscure and rare libraries. Its not that you can't do that in Python. Its just that the culture in Python world isn't made up of people who think about those problems or even in that dimension. Its a great language for writing all variety of apps. Perl is the og hacker's l…
I'll be frank: I think this idea that ${faveLang} is for misunderstood geniuses who truly understand computers where mainstream languages like Python are for dunces who only know how to glue together APIs is a large part of why such languages as Perl are nearing extinction. It turns out that there are people working on challenging problems in domains you've never heard of in Python -- and pretty much every other lang…
I wonder how much of catering to the lowest common denominator / being a team player is an internalizing of corporatisms reduction of the worker to a fungible interchangeable cog.
As a solo dev it is a massive advantage to use sophisticated languages and tools without worrying if the dumbest person on my team can use them. It’s a strategic advantage and I run rings around far larger companies.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious, what does Perl give you over Ruby if anything? I learned Ruby first, always heard it was strongly inspired by Perl (as well as Smalltalk), and it provides all the benefits you mentioned, I think.
Frankly nothing. Ruby is a strict improvement over Perl in almost every way. I cut my teeth on Perl and I still remember it fondly. But there is no reason to learn Perl (5) over Ruby. Maybe Perl 6 is a different story though.
I believe Perl got Unicode to a usable state long before Ruby. Ironic, given Ruby's origins.
Re: Half My Life with Perl
#20I’m about to turn 40 and have been thinking if I should learn Perl or AWK or go with a “modern” solution for text wrangling on the command line. The general advice here seems to be “learn Perl while young”
Perl is a super set of all things. So go with Perl. >>The general advice here seems to be “learn Perl while young” Best time to a plant a tree was 20 years back, Next best time is now. - A Chinese Saying.
On the origin of that phrase:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/603690/origins-o...
Seems like it _may_ not be Chinese. I've often seen it attributed as Chinese. Funny how that sticks.