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Perl is 26 Today

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61–70 of 194 posts

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#61
post #9
post #2

I am a Perl user and I do like it very much (warts and all). This article reminded me of another self-deprecatory Perl article: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/12/18/perl-cobol.html And yes, as the article says, Here's to 26 more! :-)

That's an interesting article but seems to be missing the actual why of it. He still likes perl because... culture? Some people are still writing software in perl or cobol, sure - and some of that is good software that solves real problems. But the reason we think of the average programmer in one of these obsolete languages as "some sort of second-class technology citizen" is that, well, they are. Compared to the res…

I guess I would need to know who "the rest of us" and the "interesting things" are.

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#62

I recently turned into a Perl user. Though I must say, documentation about Perl with CGI, and pre-made scripts are a let down. I browsed many O-Reilly books on Perl, CGI is one of the least explanative topics. Some modules have very obscure explanation on CPAN, I don't mean any offense. If not for Perl Monks, my enthusiasm might have been lost midway.

If you're looking for learning and reading material on Perl, http://perl-tutorials.org is the only way to go, exactly because Perl is so old.

The link seems to be a dead end.

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#63
post #31
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What does Python make harder? In Perl I find myself missing list comprehensions, shared-by-default threading, a well-integrated object system, and a comprehensive, integrated, popular web framework. (Also a standard way of doing event-driven programming, but that's a fair criticism of Python too). And while I'm sure the tooling functionality is there, everything just seems less obvious and standard (e.g.…

In Python I miss a switch statement, anonymous functions longer than a single line, and an object system with the power of Moose. I don't think shared-by-default threading is a good idea, and Python's GIL makes it close to pointless. I also miss a web framework like Django or Rails in Perl. I never liked Catalyst, but have not spent much time with it. I cannot judge if the tooling is less obvious, but think the tools…

If you like Django/Rails I'd suggest you check out Perl's Mojolicious - very modern Perl web framework. There's also Dancer - both seem much easier to use & set up than Catalyst

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#64
post #23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend less time “working around language deficiencies, inadequate tooling and all the rest of it” in Perl than in, for example, Python.

Interesting. What does Python make harder? In Perl I find myself missing list comprehensions, shared-by-default threading, a well-integrated object system, and a comprehensive, integrated, popular web framework. (Also a standard way of doing event-driven programming, but that's a fair criticism of Python too). And while I'm sure the tooling functionality is there, everything just seems less obvious and standard (e.g.…

There will most likely never be an integrated web framework [0] or a standard way of event-driven programming. There's more than one way.

I think Perlbrew [1] is closest to virtualenv.

[0] But there is Mojolicious, Dancer, Catalyst, etc [1] http://perlbrew.pl/

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#65

Been using Perl for almost 10 years now. I've used Perl for almost everything. Web development using CGI::Application, developing my own web framework, console apps (using the ncurses library), POE (Perl Object Environment), Web socket stuff and more. My main job currently involves maintaining and developing a huge code base in Perl including three websites (soon to expand to much more). Perl just works. I thoroughly…

Stevan Little, the author of Moose, is working on updating the Perl5 core to have a Moose-inspired Meta Object Protocol, called p5-mop.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YZNwO-uCVg Github: https://github.com/stevan/p5-mop-redux/

I'm personally interested to see how this develops.

As to my own Perl story, I used it exclusively in my first (non-student) programming job, back in the summer of 2000. I built an e-commerce website, CGI, with a cookie-based shopping cart. All from scratch, no frameworks, etc. I don't even know if there were any back then.

Fast forward to the year 2011. I started using Perl again, and loving it. Still use Perl every day. A fluid mixture of procedural, functional and object-oriented code. I really enjoy the language.

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#67

Been using Perl for almost 10 years now. I've used Perl for almost everything. Web development using CGI::Application, developing my own web framework, console apps (using the ncurses library), POE (Perl Object Environment), Web socket stuff and more. My main job currently involves maintaining and developing a huge code base in Perl including three websites (soon to expand to much more). Perl just works. I thoroughly…

Perl is definitely a cool language. I've used it for 15 years. However, I feel like it made a wrong turn somewhere and Ruby and Python both passed it. I've done a a little Ruby and some Python. They've never grabbed me like Perl, but practically speaking I don't think there are enough reasons to choose the 3rd most popular scripting language. (Btw, I've listened to the CPAN argument for 10 years. It's not enough)

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#68
post #7

I'm a relatively new programmer. Been programming for around 4 years. I tried Perl, but felt like the world had moved on, so I never really committed to it. With PHP, Python, Ruby and Javascript... space seems tight for another scripting language. Languages like Lua have something special. What's special about Perl? Edit: I don't want to be hateful. The more the merrier obviously.

I moved from Perl to Python 3 years ago. Its true. Perl feels like a very powerful base language, moving to Python felt like you were taking a bit away (I know in reality you can probably achieve much the same things). Python on the other hand doesn't require you to implement your own basic functions (max, min , trim / strip ) as they are included already. Python stops me from shooting myself in the foot as often, by…

> I moved from Perl to Python 3 years ago

But Perl-like ambiguity still seeps into your English. Was that Python 3, or 3 years ago?

Re: Perl is 26 Today

#70
post #34
post #16

Good old perl. Complicated, funny, odd and very useful. I've been using it regularly for the last 6 years now.

That moment when you realise you're older than Perl, and many of the same adjectives apply to the both to you.

Very similar to my line of thinking this morning.
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