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The Perl Renaissance

lanyrd.com

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Re: The Perl Renaissance

#61

Post by wazoox »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #12
nnq wrote: post #2

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Perl instead of, let's say Python, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Perl hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a muc…

Universal on NIX systems. Python has a few 2.x versions depending on the Distros. Some distros may opted to go 3.x only. Ruby isn't necessarily universal on NIX systems. Perl is.

Arch Linux now ships Python3 only. That's quite a problem, because many things still depend on Python 2.x (for instance building Firefox from source).

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#62

Post by wiremine »

nnq wrote: post #2

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Perl instead of, let's say Python, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Perl hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a muc…

> anybody has any arguments for using Perl instead of, let's say Python, these days?

The Perl community is software's Maker subculture [1]. They have a "heck yeah, we'll give that a try" perspective lacking from other subcultures. The the larger software ecosystem ever lost this Maker/Perl worldview, it would be a huge lose.

Taking a step back: In some ways, I think languages get larger adopted because of their culture. Their technical implementation is just a manifestation of the culture. (And, I think this explains why LISP has never broken out. It isn't a language problem, it's a cultural problem).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_subculture

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#63

Post by no_more_death »

nnq wrote: post #25
autarch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Python instead of, let's say Ruby, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Python hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a m…

I get the joke, but there are thousands of people currently learning either Ruby or Python and tons of classes for them, it's incredibly easy to hire either a Python or a Ruby (or PHP or Javascript) programmer and so on... while Perl is slowly falling off the radar.

There are 100000 perl modules, all backed up by an extensive test suite. About jobs: knowing a popular language guarantees you a job, but it doesn't guarantee you a good job. Those shooting for a higher level can pick what language they want. Those looking for higher level programmers will find a much broader distribution of language preferences. Hence Twitter runs on Scala, Blekko runs on perl.

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#64

Post by utopkara »

anonymous wrote: post #32
eCa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question can be turned around: Why should someone use Python (or Ruby) instead of Perl? For someone who hasn't used any of those, I'd say give each of them a few hours and see which style suits you best. Of course, try to find modern examples to learn from. When it comes to Perl that means: * Mojolicious [1] (or Dancer [2]) as the web framework * DBIx::Class [3] as the ORM (maybe with some sugar [4]) * Moose [5]…

Python and Ruby both have garbage collectors and can deal with reference cycles. Perl only has reference counting, leading to programs that leak memory due to reference cycles and needing to hunt down where in the code you're creating them. It's the only high-level language I know of that only has reference counting for memory management.

Even though the lack of a garbage collector is a factor, I doubt that it is the biggest reason.

I was bit quite nastily by the lack of garbage collection in Perl just a couple of months into using it.

However, perl proved itself as an invaluable tool for quickly trying out ideas, and I was loyal to it for at least 10 years. Perl just wasn't able to grow as strong as the alternatives did.

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#65

Post by berntb »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #43
autarch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Python instead of, let's say Ruby, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Python hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a m…

The superb community is one of Python's biggest assets, especially when compared to the Ruby community. The Python community is made up of some very smart and talented experts. Their emphasis is on developing high-quality software, and doing things properly. Egos are kept in check, and there are always many people willing to offer a helping hand to those who are new to Python. The Ruby community is generally quite di…

>>Egos [among Python programmers] are kept in check [compared to the Ruby community]

That is a really fun -- and typical! -- claim when your GP is a Python troll arguing that another open source language should just die... :-)

Frankly, I've never seen so much language trolls as Python trolls. (And no one needs multi line lambdas and hence real map functions, anyway...)

I don't know much about the Ruby community, but I have a hard time believing they can be worse.

Edit: But sure, the language trolls here might just a few idi... people. There are lots of you with just a few hundreds karma.

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#66

Post by kaiuhl »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #43
autarch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Python instead of, let's say Ruby, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Python hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a m…

The superb community is one of Python's biggest assets, especially when compared to the Ruby community. The Python community is made up of some very smart and talented experts. Their emphasis is on developing high-quality software, and doing things properly. Egos are kept in check, and there are always many people willing to offer a helping hand to those who are new to Python. The Ruby community is generally quite di…

I haven't read something so generalizing in a while. This is the technology-equivalent of saying that women are worse at programming than men because of their sex, or people that use Craftsmen hammers build better houses. Just because someone writes code in Ruby or Python does not assign them to one personality group and mean they are driven by similar motivations.

It sounds like you're talking about the most prolific speakers and code authors in each community who may in fact have their own personalities, but they don't define everyone who are simply using the best tool they can to accomplish their goals.

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#67

Post by dasmoth »

bryanl wrote: post #16
autarch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Python instead of, let's say Ruby, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Python hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a m…

Ruby doesn't have great support for math, science or AI. There are projects out there trying to make the ecosystem better, but currently it trails Python.

For biology -- especially the genomics side -- Perl was absolutely dominant 10 years ago. It's been gradually edged out by other things (substantially Python and R) since then. Desire for better statistical tools may be a driver here, but it's interesting that it's led to a switch of languages rather than building more stats tools for Perl

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#68

Post by walshemj »

nnq wrote: post #2

...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Perl instead of, let's say Python, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument) ...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way! (don't get me wrong, I'm not a Perl hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a muc…

CPAN is probably the main one when i built a front end to authority labs api all of the heavy lifting (apart from the Callback handler) was done using perl modules

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#69

Post by berntb »

ShiningRay wrote: post #30

I'm always looking forward to Perl6, waiting for its stable version, for 10 years.

As I understand, it has been going on for as long as Python 3 -- which is starting to be used in a few places now. (The difference is that Perl 6 is really, really, really ambitious. Let's see if it ever gets production-ready.)

Re: The Perl Renaissance

#70

Post by berntb »

pyre wrote: post #44
nnq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, why ? You wouldn't hire someone that has some "language aesthetic preferences", although a bit different that the mainstream ones? He said "preventing me for ever liking Python" not "I'll never touch it because of this".

This is really the same as saying, "I won't work for company X because I don't think the brackets in the C++ code should be on the following line[1]!" [1] E.g.: int main() { } vs. int main() { } This is an apt analogy because most companies will have some sort of code style guide that you have to follow, which doesn't make "coding at company X where bracket placement is enforced" much different from "coding in Python…

There are some problems with the whitespace in Python.

I wrote some code with lots of nameless functions as input parameters (think JavaScript style or Ruby blocks), which of course was an ugly pain to port to Python with no multi-line lambdas.

List comprehensions is another example -- a kludge coming from that the lack of multi instruction lambdas stop real map functions. (The fun part is that this necessity is touted as something good, instead of admitting that it is unnecessary complexity to learn.)

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