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Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

blogs.perl.org

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Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#71

Post by ycamel »

mikepk wrote: post #55

I have some experience in this area. My first startup: Grazr ( http://tcrn.ch/aUqiIb ), the back end was mostly Perl with some custom C modules. Grazr was started in 2005 when Perl was already out of fashion. So why did we choose Perl, practical reasons mostly. My co-founder had previously been the CTO of the company that owned Slashdot and he had a team of top-notch Perl people that he thought would want to join us.…

Welcome another Python dummer. TL;DR

your assertion about "perl" is also applies to all laguages.

Don't repeat pythonista's propaganda pattern as plain as day. :)

" I used perl(or other lang.) enough. -> but it is sucks and blah blah... -> I switch to Python"

FED UP!

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#72

Post by ycamel »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #64
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 everythi…

Pyhon and Ruby should have explicitly-declared real lexical scoped variable and strict mode.

I can't understand they insist we are modern language than perl without such features. :)

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#73

Post by rjbond3rd »

greglindahl wrote: post #61
ownagefool wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ...obviously aren't using DBI

There's really no way to use MySQL without DBI. But at that level, one is still writing db-specific SQL -- perhaps you mean an ORM?

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#74

Post by sciurus »

dmoney wrote: post #31
robotmay wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their introduction to Perl and documentation for it is really quite handy for someone coming from another language. I wrote a plugin in Perl without any previous knowledge of it and it only took an evening. And as it turns out I quite like Perl now.

I can't seem to find DuckDuckGo's intro to Perl.

For a decent intro try Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes by Sam Hughes http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

(although unless you;re working with an established codebase, skip the section on objects and read http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl/chapter_07.html... instead)

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#75

Post by tene »

smoyer wrote: post #49
pachydermic wrote: post #47

I really don't like the hate for perl. Sure, it's got some stuff which can be a bit difficult to understand at first, but that flexibility is nice when you just want to whip something up quickly. It reminds me of how people love to hate Java because of it's verbose code (myself included). At the end of the day, if you know what you're doing it really doesn't get in your way. I do a lot of metaprogramming and text pro…

Sounds like you have the right tool for the job. I'd be curious to know if you use Perl for large projects with long lifetimes (and if so, strategies for doing so effectively).

PerlCritic for coding standards tests was very helpful for the projects I've adopted it on.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#76

Post by PySlice »

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…

I think your comment is spot-on. A good Perl programmer can do wonders, but if you add just one average programmer to the team (without a very extensive training), he can write stupid things faster than the good programmer could fix, LOL. Then the codebase would be a mess, with things that kinda work but are conceptually wrong or weird for those who really know the language.

And the good programmer could do anything in a less eccentric language anyway, so...

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#77

Post by mahmud »

ycamel wrote: post #32
reidrac wrote: post #10

I've been a Perl fan for years and I really enjoyed using the language in my personal projects (and in a couple of professional projects, it was "the secret ingredient"), but I couldn't fight all the prejudices surrounding Perl; so I finally gave up and learnt Python hoping to find a quality job as software developer. It worked out pretty well and I found a great job. I love doing Python, the community and the cultur…

HAHA Python is fucking readable. https://github.com/hiddenillusion/AnalyzePE/blob/master/Adob... http://blog.delroth.net/2013/03/escaping-a-python-sandbox-nd...

That first link is terrible. They should have used a rules engine.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#78

Post by berntb »

scardine wrote: post #20
gautamsomani wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he used perl to build some thing huge. Just wondering if that huge thing would have run as smooth in python as in perl?

I used to love Perl as well, it is amazing for text processing and at the time was the silver tape of Internet. It is pleasant to write, but I can't say the same for reading: sometimes it is hard to understand my own Perl code after untouched for a few months. In this regard, my experience is the same: Python is more readable and easy to maintain. There's more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI or TIMTOWTDI, pronounced…

I did a year of Python. There are good and bad things with everything. Python was OK, the learning curve the first few weeks/months is really well planned.

I prefer Perl given a competent team. Mostly because of the CPAN Testers and because it is fun.

Bad with Python are details like e.g. no real one-liners. I also think there is something rotten with the language culture that e.g. results in lots and lots of language war trolls from 19-karma accounts on HN...

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#79

Post by VLM »

btilly wrote: post #53
simula67 wrote: post #14

Perl is not going away any time soon. 1,20,000 packages[1] ( compared to Pypi : 32621 [2] and Rubygems : 59,519 [3] )is nothing to scoff at. [1] http://www.cpan.org/ [2] https://pypi.python.org/pypi [3] http://rubygems.org/

This is true, BUT there is a law of diminishing returns. The value of a large library scales nonlinearly. The added packages are more likely to be unrelated to whatever you are doing, and so become progressively less likely to be useful. That said a culture of testing all of the time makes the Perl packages less likely to have serious conflicts. Which is a huge value proposition. (For the Ruby fans who jump up to obj…

"The added packages are more likely to be unrelated to whatever you are doing, and so become progressively less likely to be useful."

I've not found that to be a problem in actual development. It just gives the search engine extra work with no impact on my productivity. For example, the existence of "CNC::Cog" has no impact on me, although it gives the search engine extra work when I search for "Astro::FITS".

The value of Perl to me, is if its computationally possible, there's probably a module on CPAN to make it easier for me. Therefore its the easiest to use, most powerful language, because I can do the most with the least effort, and time is money. Shrinking CPAN would merely make me move to the currently second most powerful language/library team. Donno, java or ruby or python or something like that.

I do agree that in an academic setting, a homework assignment like "here's a list of 10 random Perl modules, now make something interesting out of them" would be painful. However, the programming equivalent of the "Chopped" TV cooking show might be highly amusing for a youtube video series or some kind of competitive multi-player startup game company.

Re: Perl Startups: Lacuna Expanse

#80

Post by VLM »

systems wrote: post #2

a bit off topic, but i really wish if jetbrains creates an ide for perl, similar to their pycharm or phpstorm i believe compared to other younger languages perl can be overwhelming, and i think a great ide will go a long way reducing the barrier of entry to new comers

Padre?

http://padre.perlide.org/

I don't use it, too slow compared to just "vi" and a command line. I can type quickly, cannot click a mouse 1000 times quickly to do the same thing. Given that I find it uninteresting so I'm not a sympathetic reviewer, I have played with padre enough to see it works and has quite a few features and is free. I've seen it improve over the years. I'm not sure what specific barriers are reduced by an IDE like padre, as most of the features seem only of benefit to truly immense non-modularized projects which culturally don't "fit" well in Perl. If it can't all fit in your head at once, abstract something out into a separate package complete with unit tests and shrink it until it does fit. And a large full screen editor with no IDE in the way makes it easier to fit in your mind rather than a small postage stamp view of the code. That all said, I liked seeing the integration in padre with perlcritic and perltidy, just not enough to switch away from vi. I need my screen real estate and keyboard more than I need automated perltidy/perlcritic and mouse shortcuts which have an impedance bump with vi anyway.

Perhaps the best "ide" for a newcomer would be multiple machines/monitors with one very large editor for code, one web browser to google for questions/examples/ideas/docs and one large window for interaction either in the debugger or testing your code. So three monitors minimum connected to 1 to 3 computers? I feel cramped when doing "stuff" with less than three. I can't imagine doing anything other than emergency support with a small laptop screen although I've had to do it in the past.

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