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Half My Life with Perl

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Re: Half My Life with Perl

#21

Post by stouset »

kamaal wrote: post #12
canvascritic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The superpower here is a scripting language, not Perl specifically.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#22

Post by RandalSchwartz »

akira2501 wrote: post #16
canvascritic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Inline::C did a good job of reducing the barrier to entry for C code.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#23

Post by edoceo »

treve wrote: post #20
kamaal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought it was Uncle Iroh.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#24

Post by kqr »

temporallobe wrote: post #17

Perl 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 youn…

Indeed. As a younger engineer I learned Perl during a brief stint as manager (because I didn't have time to do real programming, but I still needed to automate things). I have no regrets. It is one of the most useful languages I know, transcending what I do for a living.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#25

Post by lokar »

kamaal wrote: post #5
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I think Node and Python have long taken over CPAN. But apart from that, I was nodding through your whole comment… Perl really is a super power. POSIX at your fingertips!

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…

Regex and slicing are not the only options. I find that people tend to over estimate how hard it is to write a basic parser.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#26

Post by kqr »

liontwist wrote: post #6
kamaal wrote: post #2

Perl 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…

I’m into lisp and vim. I did one small project with Perl but wasn’t excited. I was hoping for bash 2.0 but the shell integration wasn’t great. Seems like python is a similar feature set, less exotic, and has great libraries. Anyway? What did I miss? anything I should take a second look at?

If you're into Lisp you're probably not missing that much. The main reason I use Perl over Lisp is that Perl is preinstalled nearly everywhere, whereas Lisp is not.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#27

Post by [deleted] »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #18
canvascritic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#28

Post by akira2501 »

RandalSchwartz wrote: post #22
akira2501 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Inline::C did a good job of reducing the barrier to entry for C code.

True but I don't remember it being nearly as convenient to distribute those modules as it still required the whole build environment on the target and you still had to deal with perls exceptionally efficient but ancient and cumbersome object and type system.

XS wasn't _that_ bad once you got the hang of it; anyways, but I do remember ruby 1.6 coming out and being blown away by how improved the experience of creating distributable C modules was. The class system was flat and easy to access, you could map ruby language concepts into C almost directly, and the garbage collection system was fully accessible.

perl 6 started being discussed right around this time and I think it was clear in the early years that it wasn't going to try to compete on these grounds at all instead focusing on more abstract and complex language features.

Anyways.. even seeing your name just brings me back to that wonderful time in my life, so don't get me wrong, I loved perl, but that was my memory of the time and why I think I finally just walked away from perl entirely.

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#29

Post by canvascritic »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #18
canvascritic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with you that it is sad there isn't more diversity in languages and tools, and that generally organizations are using the same terrible slop. We could have such nice things

You lose me with the smugness. Make no mistake, you aren't smarter or better than someone else purely by virtue of your willingness to hack on BEAM languages or smlnj or Racket or whatever languages you like. There are probably people smarter than you working in sales at $bigcorp or writing C# on Windows Server 2008 at your local utility. Novice programmers often have an instinct to rewrite systems from scratch when they should be learning how to read and understand code others have written. Similarly, I associate smugness of this form with low capacity for navigating constraints that tend to arise when solving difficult problems in the real world. The real world isn't ideal, sorry to say

Re: Half My Life with Perl

#30

Post by throwaway2037 »

kamaal wrote: post #5
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I think Node and Python have long taken over CPAN. But apart from that, I was nodding through your whole comment… Perl really is a super power. POSIX at your fingertips!

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…

    > Node/NPM definitely is on-par with CPAN. But pip isn't even close.
Can you explain why Python pip isn't close to CPAN? I could always find what I needed.
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