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Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

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Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#61
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge your efficiency claims. The benchmarks just do not support. I mean, roughly in parity with Python and PHP, 20x slower than Clojure on average, 30x slower than Haskell, and on many tasks 100x slower than C. Over the whole bredth of the Alioth shootout programs, Perl trades places with JRuby as the slowest tested language.

Most of what I do involves loading text files with fixed width records. A file is between 500M and 4Gb. Then I do things with these records. So far I have not found anything faster than perl unpack (1), but I would be happy to. I plan to investigate Go soon. Would you have another suggestion? 1 : or marginally faster, with the advantages negated by the time it takes to write the code. However, a 10x improvement would…

"However, a 10x improvement would be very interesting to me."

I managed to optimize a similar problem as yours until it was I/O limited. 1/10th the CPU would not change anything in the overall system.

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#62
post #4

Dozens of slides of memes, curses and buzzwords. The state of communicating on the internet in 2013. Can someone more patient than I am tell me if there's some actual content in there?

Did you read the notes under the slides?

The print was very small. I can't think of a worse way to present one's thoughts.

Edit: well... I guess if I could not control the speed of the slides... that would have been worse.

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#63

> Moe is an attempt to show a way forward, not be a way forward. I can certainly appreciate the desire to make something fun, either for your personal edification, or to try to engage the constructive aspect of your community, I have to wonder: is there enough manpower left in the Perl community to handle all five-six of these revitalization efforts, while also continuing the march to Perl 6 and maintaining 25 years…

> In 2013 nearly every problem has a language more appropriate than Perl. Citation needed. Seriously, please stop making such broad statements based on your feelings and opinions and instead please make an earnest effort to separate objective facts from your subjective perception. And just to address another point: Perl has multiple real object systems that are inter-compatible (with one small exception), and are con…

I'd say the onus is on Perl to be the best language for a niche, rather than on me to provide a list of niches with languages better than Perl.

Besides that, language appropriateness is necessarily subjective. I love Prolog and Haskell and use them all the time. My passion for them makes their thorns seem small and easily avoided, but the reality is that those thorns are sufficient to keep out a lot of curious people. I didn't really figure out how to write a Prolog program that handled command line arguments until a month ago. Prior to that, I would just run Prolog, consult my script and run my function. Simple enough barrier, but one that would have kept most of my friends away.

I think you took my "real X, Y, Z" list as a literal insult, which isn't what I meant. I don't know Perl. I was just referencing the presentation, not trying to sling arrows at Moose or whatever.

I do think that providing multiple options where most languages have one option built-in is unnecessary cognitive load. One doesn't "choose" an "object system" for Python--what benefit would one hope to gain? That the options are compatible is nice, but it's indisputably more work for everyone than just having one.

Having what are essentially language built-ins elsewhere available instead on CPAN is worth complaining about, because if you're going to do things differently from others, the difference should be motivated by something. That something in Perl is backwards compatibility and the desire to provide lots of options. The former is an explanation, not a rationale, and the latter implies, again, a cognitive cost. When you spend my attention and brain power, I had better get something in return. "Options" are only worth something if the alternatives are worth choosing between. In the case of OO, complete intercompatibility between them suggests the differences are minor; in that case, why have them?

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#66
post #49
post #2

In perl5 : - I can have a prototype running in a matter of minutes - I have access to a vast library of modules doing everything I need (which helps the former) - I write quick and efficient code Do I really care about what other people think about the languages and tools I use? No. However, I do care about efficiency and results And, uh, working with a language that has been out for tens of years makes me believe my…

In 10 years you could say exactly the same thing, except that: - Perl 6 will STILL be in development - You just lost 10 years of development experience and related marketability because now all those fad-du-jour systems are established industry leaders - Nothing would have have changed back in Perl 5 land because everyone can only develop in 5.8.x or 5.10.x in case they break something. The upside of course is that t…

"all those fad-du-jour systems are established industry leaders"

I'm trying to think of what the fads were in 2003. That was the tail end of extreme programming. Kernel03 or kernelcon or whatever it was called had a presentation about replacing devfs with udev since adsorbed into systemd. Simultaneously the new JACK system running on top of ALSA was going to take over sound on the desktop. In 2003 Moodle was the new leader of online course software. I would claim PHP4 was a very popular web programming language in 2003. Firefox was beginning its explosive growth. Bonjour/Rendezvous was new and making noise in networking. By far the most dominant handheld computing platform was the Palm, I still had my couple year old 3 and my wife had one of the M100 series. Dot-net and/or mono were going to take over the entire world; we're still waiting. I believe by this late the cuecat had already sunk along with most of the dotcom era stuff.

At this point I'm running out of ideas from 2003. I don't think "all" would be a good adjective. I'm having an easy time remembering fads that took off, and forgetting things that sank.

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#67

Before you comment, please keep the following things in mind: The talk was held by Stevan Little, the creator of Moose, the person who experimented in Moe on a modern Perl 5, and the person who is currently working on a Meta-Object-Protocol that can be put in the Perl core to make good OO available out of the box, on which Moose, Moo and friends can built. He dearly loves Perl and has done a lot for it. This talk is…

I won't comment then because the tiny tiny print was so painfully horrible to read I only made a few slides in. He seemed to be making a point though. Just the presentation was horrible.

I agree that the font could have been bigger, especially since some people have trouble with their vision. However i would also like to remind you that probably all browsers capable of displaying the slides at all, also have zoom controls available.

Lastly, i would like to thank you for refraining from commenting on the contents. That is all i ask from anyone unable to take in the content. :)

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2013 nearly every problem has a language more appropriate than Perl. Citation needed. Seriously, please stop making such broad statements based on your feelings and opinions and instead please make an earnest effort to separate objective facts from your subjective perception. And just to address another point: Perl has multiple real object systems that are inter-compatible (with one small exception), and are con…

I'd say the onus is on Perl to be the best language for a niche, rather than on me to provide a list of niches with languages better than Perl. Besides that, language appropriateness is necessarily subjective. I love Prolog and Haskell and use them all the time. My passion for them makes their thorns seem small and easily avoided, but the reality is that those thorns are sufficient to keep out a lot of curious people…

>>I do think that providing multiple options where most languages have one option built-in is unnecessary cognitive load.

(I'll assume you're not a troll despite acknowledging that you talk about a subject you don't know.)

You are seriously arguing against flexibility and configurability of your programming environment? I guess you don't like Lisp either?

To answer your specific point, re OO system: Today the de-facto Perl OO system (Moose with relatives) is better than the alternatives among other scripting languages. Without language extensibility, that wouldn't have happened.

Exactly where the optimum is for sizes of std libs can and should be discussed. IMHO, after a few work years, a week or two extra to learn an environment is worth it when you get things like Moose. YMMV, but since you acknowledge that you don't know the environment, well...

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment then because the tiny tiny print was so painfully horrible to read I only made a few slides in. He seemed to be making a point though. Just the presentation was horrible.

I agree that the font could have been bigger, especially since some people have trouble with their vision. However i would also like to remind you that probably all browsers capable of displaying the slides at all, also have zoom controls available. Lastly, i would like to thank you for refraining from commenting on the contents. That is all i ask from anyone unable to take in the content. :)

Of course. And by the time I zoomed enough to make the tiny text a comfortable size, the slides had more than doubled in size... forcing the text (and slide controls) well below the fold. So now I have to keep scrolling up and down to read the text and see the slides. Not sure is Speakerdeck is just a crap resource or this guy just messed it up. Either way, this is a horrible presentation of thoughts.

Re: Perl - the Detroit of scripting languages

#70
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, if sounds like you need to expand your horizons if you feel that Perl is mostly competing with Java or shell scripts as the best language for the job.

How so? Shell scripts are for things that have almost no logic besides running other programs. Perl is for things that do have internal logic, and aren't big enough for the lack of formal function parameters to be an issue. Java is for things that talk to the database (or need other libraries, such as for reading/writing Excel files), or are too large to keep in my head all at once (most of which talk to the database…

>>Perl [...] lack of formal function parameters

http://search.cpan.org/~barefoot/Method-Signatures-20130222/...

(And others on CPAN.)

>> [C for suid flag]

Afaik, you should be able to use anything for suid stuff.

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