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Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

blogs.perl.org

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Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#61

Post by greglindahl »

ownagefool wrote: post #11
james2vegas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a bit off topic, i really wish Perl CMSes would stop dropping Postgres support in favour of a MySQL only strategy (Movable Type and WebGUI [Plain Black], this means you). You'd think DBI did not exist or that this was really PHP.

PHP has a database abrstraction layer built into language that offers support for postgres in addition to a couple of fairly popular abstractions / ORMs / other alternatives. This has nothing to do with either language and everything to do with the projects themselves. Stop dissing languages based on the distant past, especially not when using Perl.

Everything has a database abstraction layer available. The problem is that programmers often don't use them. The perl CMSes obviously aren't using DBI, or they'd still be supporting Postgres... no need to turn the thread into language-related complaining when it is a universal problem.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#62

Post by Mikeb85 »

seunosewa wrote: post #24

"Python isn't half as good of a language as Ruby." "C# isn't quite as good as Java" Can anyone who truly believes these things be taken seriously, really?

These sorts of things are subjective. I personally like Ruby at least twice as much as Python. Since Ruby is far more Perl-like than Python, it's hardly a surprise that a Perl programmer thinks it's better.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#64

Post by prodigal_erik »

asperous wrote: post #6

>Ruby - Now that Perl has Dancer/Plack/Moose, Ruby has nothing that Perl doesn't have (at least that I've seen). Therefore no reason to switch. >Python - Basically the same argument as Ruby, except that in my opinion Python isn't half as good of a language as Ruby. IMO he kinda missed the main ideological differences, benefits, pros, cons of both ruby and python.

Ruby has two things over Perl: a reusable library built in the same object system you want to use (most of CPAN predates Moose and uses the brain-damaged vintage 1990 dispatch setup directly) and a culture of raising exceptions (rather than returning arbitrary bad values nobody remembers to check for). Sometimes I wish Ruby and Python could have merged, but it'd never work so long as Guido prefers expressing everything procedurally rather than in reusable block objects.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#65

Post by Mikeb85 »

We need posts like this for every language. Nowadays, thanks to the open-source culture, the ease of sharing and installing libraries, you can do just about anything with any language.

You can run a start-up on Python, Ruby, Java, Scala, C#, Haskell, OCaml, Clojure, Common Lisp, C++, etc... Programmer familiarity with language semantics and tools is likely going to make a bigger difference than the language itself.

Google runs on Python/Java/C++, Facebook runs on PHP/C++, Twitter on Scala/Ruby, and a number of large sites run on all sorts of other crazy languages.

Hearing about the pros of Perl from a Perl programmer is nice, even though I'm not particularly fond of Perl. I'm personally building apps in Clojure, because I like Lisps, Clojure has great features and a great environment, and it just suits the way I like to think about problems. I think it's the best language ever, but I also understand why people would think the same about Ruby, Python, Scala, JS, etc...

I think some people make too much out of posts like this, yes he thinks Perl is the best language, and it probably is for him. At the very least, he gives compelling reasons for Perl programmers to continue in Perl, and not feel like they 'need' to switch to Python or Ruby...

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#67

Post by chromatic »

mitchty wrote: post #41
RussianCow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any language can be made unreadable. I can write terrible Ruby/Perl/PHP/JavaScript, too. Doesn't make them bad languages.

Agreed, I"m a Ruby person personally and often end up writing things that later I only shake my head at and rip out and replace with a few lines or a better idiom/algorithm. To be honest the parent comment to yours first link reminds me of a rather lot of shell/perl created by people that treat things with the procedural mindset and just keep bashing their heads against a problem until it succeeds. There isn't anythi…

To be honest the parent comment to yours first link reminds me of a rather lot of shell/perl created by people that treat things with the procedural mindset and just keep bashing their heads against a problem until it succeeds.

To my mind, that's a success for Perl: it allows people who wouldn't otherwise be able to write programs to do so. Sure, they make messes--who doesn't at first?--but they get things done.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#68

Post by chromatic »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #23

The largest reason why I would hesitate to use Perl in my startup would be the core philosophy of TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it). Being able to write something multiple different ways leads to Perl being a lot easier to write than it is to read. As a result code maintenance can become a huge headache due to someone not understanding the idioms used by the person who originally wrote the code. I've se…

As a result code maintenance can become a huge headache due to someone not understanding the idioms used by the person who originally wrote the code.

I don't understand this. If this hurts you, wouldn't you have the same problem with domain knowledge, except an order of magnitude worse? Why are your developers not talking to each other?

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#69

Post by mitchty »

chromatic wrote: post #67
mitchty wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I"m a Ruby person personally and often end up writing things that later I only shake my head at and rip out and replace with a few lines or a better idiom/algorithm. To be honest the parent comment to yours first link reminds me of a rather lot of shell/perl created by people that treat things with the procedural mindset and just keep bashing their heads against a problem until it succeeds. There isn't anythi…

To be honest the parent comment to yours first link reminds me of a rather lot of shell/perl created by people that treat things with the procedural mindset and just keep bashing their heads against a problem until it succeeds. To my mind, that's a success for Perl: it allows people who wouldn't otherwise be able to write programs to do so. Sure, they make messes--who doesn't at first?--but they get things done.

True enough, just pointing out that you can write... ugly code in any language. Bash/perl tend to get abused more often from what I've seen. Hopefully they improve in the future.
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