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Perl is 25 years old today

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Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#11

Post by czr80 »

kamaal wrote: post #8
frozenport wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yes 2. I also don't like that their naming convention doesn't reflect functionality. How would you assign carp, cluck, croak and confess functions?

You have chosen a very small topic to discuss the vast range of advantages TIMTOWDI offers. Now bear with me for a minute while I explain you this whole thing. Have you worked with a language where your though tool just wasn't for you? Have you felt that language was pushing down its own self believed principles down your throat? What happens when programmers face such situations? They just leave the tool and go to s…

"rage of advantages" - somehow this seems to perfectly capture TIMTOWDI ;-)

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#12

Post by maligree »

I'll raise the glass: here's to Perl, for being the first language I could actually get shit done in.

Unmaintainable? Who cared. Got shit done. Too many ways to do things? Who cared. Got shit done.

I have this totally false feeling that BACK THEN* we wrote IRC bots and we were happy. And `perl -e '"A"x800'` was the destroyer of worlds.

* - shit, I just realized I'm young.

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#14

Post by ryporter »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #4

Before i switched to Python as my general purpose language, i used to be a bit of a Perl fanatic. I've still to come across a language that lets you get your ideas down as quickly. It's full of fantastic time savers, e.g. the for( ) construct and the format output functionality cover a bunch of common use cases in minimal keystrokes (let me pipe in some data, analyse it, then spit it out in a clean report). It can hu…

I'm in a similar boat. I've largely switched to Python as my scripting language (except for one-liners), but I'll still defend Perl against those who dismiss it out of hand. After using it an Amazon, I've seen firsthand how productive one can be with the language; and, if you're careful (following, e.g., the guidelines in "Perl Best Practices" by Conway) it's very possible to write maintainable code as well.

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#15

Post by ojosilva »

Here's Perl 1.0, published by Larry on comp.unix.sources 25 years ago ("Revision 1.0 87/12/18 13:07:40 root").

https://groups.google.com/group/comp.sources.unix/browse_frm...

                       Perl Kit, Version 1.0 
 
                   Copyright (c) 1987, Larry Wall 
 
      You may copy the perl kit in whole or in part as long
            as you don't try to make money off it, 
                 or pretend that you wrote it.

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#16

Post by dalke »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #4

Before i switched to Python as my general purpose language, i used to be a bit of a Perl fanatic. I've still to come across a language that lets you get your ideas down as quickly. It's full of fantastic time savers, e.g. the for( ) construct and the format output functionality cover a bunch of common use cases in minimal keystrokes (let me pipe in some data, analyse it, then spit it out in a clean report). It can hu…

Have you looked at APL or its derivatives like J and K? For certain types of work, and with experience, it's very terse and expressive.

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#19

Post by mstevens »

ojosilva wrote: post #15

Here's Perl 1.0, published by Larry on comp.unix.sources 25 years ago ("Revision 1.0 87/12/18 13:07:40 root"). https://groups.google.com/group/comp.sources.unix/browse_frm... Perl Kit, Version 1.0 Copyright (c) 1987, Larry Wall You may copy the perl kit in whole or in part as long as you don't try to make money off it, or pretend that you wrote it.

Slightly self-promotion, but you can get a variety of old perl sources at http://www.etla.org/retroperl/ (collected by someone non-me, I can't remember who though)

I had thought someone had done a perl 1 release that built on modern systems, but on a quick hunt I can't find it.

Re: Perl is 25 years old today

#20

Post by brcrth »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #4

Before i switched to Python as my general purpose language, i used to be a bit of a Perl fanatic. I've still to come across a language that lets you get your ideas down as quickly. It's full of fantastic time savers, e.g. the for( ) construct and the format output functionality cover a bunch of common use cases in minimal keystrokes (let me pipe in some data, analyse it, then spit it out in a clean report). It can hu…

So why you moved to Python?
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