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Perl 5.20.0 released

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Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#41

Post by raiph »

joel_perl_prog wrote: post #10
tenfingers wrote: post #9

Perl gives me the impression of being one of the few language that's still evolving significantly on a syntax level despite being so old.

Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...) I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longe…

I like Perl 6 (P6). I would like Perl 5 folk pondering P5's internals or its future to properly investigate and understand P6's role.

> how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM?

In the opening few minutes of Patrick Michaud's 2013 video "Perl on the JVM", he notes that Jesse Vincent suggested "Perl 6 is Perl's best (only?) hope for running on JVM/.NET".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPh5Li3k4g

Have you read about FROGGS' v5?

http://usev5.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/here-implement-labels-...

> I really feel like the difficulty of working on the Perl 5 internals limits the language--and ultimately, will kill it.

There's been a serious effort to clean up the internals in recent years. But yeah, part of the point of P6 was to develop much better internals.

Rakudo and the NQP compiler toolchain are not only well designed but also almost entirely written in P6 code. (Counting NQP as P6.)

> attracting new blood, new developers, young teams of vocal and enthusiastic programmers... I just don't see that happening.

Even in the face of its disastrous reputation, P6 still manages to attract new blood. Aiui the guy who writes the P6 weekly news (http://p6weekly.wordpress.com/) contributed to the Python core before getting in to P6. This year I've seen smart kids visit #perl6 for the first time, chat knowledgeably about a lisp or ML, and start to contribute. Some well known P5 folk such as Nicholas Clark (one of the few folk ever paid by TPF to hack on the P5 internals) and lizmat have fully turned their focus toward P6 in the last year or so.

> I have yet to find another language that I love as much as Perl (and I wouldn't mind doing so, at this point).

What about hanging out on #perl6 for a while (prime time is about 8am thru 8pm EST, 7 days a week) to chat with folk and see what there is to see?

https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/perl6

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#42

Post by duskwuff »

pflanze wrote: post #37
VLM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Its a running joke WRT general global variables, and they all have a single character synonym. And once you use up the preferred letters, well, stranger things are used. a C programmer who understands command line argument lists would not even remotely be surprised at the contents of the general variable $0. Its probably more "civilized" to call it $PROGRAM_NAME in your code, but whatever. I don't think this is…

$0 (along with $1 etc.) is used in shells, at least bash [and original sh?]. I think Perl just borrowed those, like $ prefixes to variables or not offering explicit subroutine arguments, from the traditional unix shell(s).

From traditional UNIX shells, by way of awk. perl was originally written as a fancier version of awk (to the point that, until recently, it came with a utility "a2p" that translated awk source code to perl), so that's where it got the variables.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#43

Post by joel_perl_prog »

raiph wrote: post #41
joel_perl_prog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...) I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longe…

I like Perl 6 (P6). I would like Perl 5 folk pondering P5's internals or its future to properly investigate and understand P6's role. > how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM? In the opening few minutes of Patrick Michaud's 2013 video "Perl on the JVM", he notes that Jesse Vincent suggested "Perl 6 is Perl's best (only?) hope for running on JVM/.NET". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPh5Li3k4g Have you read abou…

Thank you. That's a really informative and inspiring reply.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#44

Post by __david__ »

Mithaldu wrote: post #40
__david__ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And $$, and $?. Even Perl's $#x syntax to get the max index of @x seems to come from shell's $#. Also interesting, Ruby copied most of Perl's crazy variables [1]. [1] http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/globalvars.html

Ruby's goal was to be Perl, but better.

Then they probably shouldn't have copied the crazy obscure variable stuff ;-)

(I say that as a Perl and Ruby fan)

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#45

Post by ionforce »

joel_perl_prog wrote: post #10
tenfingers wrote: post #9

Perl gives me the impression of being one of the few language that's still evolving significantly on a syntax level despite being so old.

Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...) I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longe…

Try Scala. It's a very expressive language that does not sacrifice on power (JVM/type safety).

As a long time professional Perl programmer, I've given up on it. The heartache it has caused on enterprise teams I've been on is not worth the rise in blood pressure. And I'm starting to think that it is inefficient in its yield per unit of effort ratio. Writing good, scalable, clean, modern Perl requires so much couching and qualifying. My teammates couldn't even write good Perl. And so despite my want of evangelizing it, pitching to younger programmers is probably not useful/efficient.

But no, I'm not bitter. =)

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#46

Post by nikatwork »

__david__ wrote: post #44
Mithaldu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby's goal was to be Perl, but better.

Then they probably shouldn't have copied the crazy obscure variable stuff ;-) (I say that as a Perl and Ruby fan)

Matz admits that he might have stolen too much from Perl and got some "whale guts" over his shoes - but only a little.

From the obligatory Yegge rant: https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#47

Post by raiph »

ionforce wrote: post #45
joel_perl_prog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...) I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longe…

Try Scala. It's a very expressive language that does not sacrifice on power (JVM/type safety). As a long time professional Perl programmer, I've given up on it. The heartache it has caused on enterprise teams I've been on is not worth the rise in blood pressure. And I'm starting to think that it is inefficient in its yield per unit of effort ratio. Writing good, scalable, clean, modern Perl requires so much couching…

> Try Scala.

Aiui folk who love Perl tend to have a natural affinity for Scala. Stevan Little (the Moose and P5 MOP guy) chose Scala for Moe and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it.

I'm in to P6. ionforce, please indulge/educate me:

> {Scala|P6 is} a very expressive language that does not sacrifice on power (JVM/type safety).

I hope you see where I'm coming from and are willing to play ball. :)

First and foremost, P6 is incomplete, immature, slow, etc. and almost no one is using it to do anything serious. Aiui Scala is used in a wide range of production settings. This is likely the end of any comparison for most folk.

Scala runs on the JVM. Aiui there's no attempt or intent to run it on anything else. Rakudo (P6) runs on the JVM. It also runs on other VMs including MoarVM. See http://moarvm.org

Scala can "seamlessly" call Java code and vice-versa. Rakudo/JVM can call Java code, but it's currently ugly looking. Java code should be able to call P6 code using Rakudo/JVM but the necessary work isn't complete.

Aiui Scala has solid concurrency and parallelism features. P6 has a good story regarding the language's design as it relates to concurrency and parallelism, but implementation only began last year. See http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-nlpw-reactive.pdf for some of the best Rakudo currently has to offer concurrency-wise.

Scala does type inferencing and you can add explicit types. Its type hierarchy is Java's. P6 also does type inferencing with optional explicit types. But it's type hierarchy is not the same as Java's.

Scala has traits, pattern matching, and higher order functions. So does Rakudo.

> But no, I'm not bitter. =)

Of course not. There's more than one way to do it. :)

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#48

Post by raiph »

joel_perl_prog wrote: post #43
raiph wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Perl 6 (P6). I would like Perl 5 folk pondering P5's internals or its future to properly investigate and understand P6's role. > how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM? In the opening few minutes of Patrick Michaud's 2013 video "Perl on the JVM", he notes that Jesse Vincent suggested "Perl 6 is Perl's best (only?) hope for running on JVM/.NET". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPh5Li3k4g Have you read abou…

Thank you. That's a really informative and inspiring reply.

I hope I'm being helpful. There's definitely a glass half full / half empty dilemma with talking about P6.

Let me now include a standard caveat list I created last year in an attempt to ensure balance in the force:

"Perl 6 is not remotely as usable and useful as Perl 5; it has dozens of users, not millions; it is 100-1000x slower than Perl 5 for a lot of stuff; the P6 documentation is immature and incomplete; the spec has not reached 6.0.0; the Rakudo compiler has not fully implemented what's already in the spec; most of the concurrency and parallel implementation has only just begun; P6 can not currently use CPAN modules; Perl 6 has syntax and semantics that are not backwards compatible with Perl 5; Perl 6 culture is -Ofun which some think is incompatible with getting things done; some folk think that Perl 6 code looks like line noise... In summary, there are infinitely many things wrong with P6."

I hope that hasn't brought you down to earth with too big a bump.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#49

Post by logicallee »

jbert wrote: post #25
nnq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'subroutine signatures' is such a basic and expected feature that it isn't even named in other languages. People just assume "it has to be there"... This is what makes people run way from Perl nowadays. I recently tried to convince someone that Perl is superior to PHP. When he saw the sub and $_ and shift he was like "I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole". And there was nothing I could say. Compared to somethin…

Well, it's just that perl for: sub foo($x, $y, $z) ... has up to now been written: sub foo { my ($x, $y, $z) = @_; ... which is annoying boilerplate I agree, but actually pretty regular. [You mean language xxx has two different ways to declare subroutine lexical vars?] The people who want to hate perl will continue to hate it. After the list of reasons they dislike it are resolved, they'll come up with new ones and/o…

After the list of reasons people dislike it are resolved, it won't be Perl. It's fine to start calling a modern language Perl, even though the modern language has standard syntax that no current Perl programmer would consider Perl, and standard computer science constructs like OOP and Unicode etc that require coding against a different abstraction than Perl. Nothing wrong with that. But the new Perl would have as little to do with the old Perl as an iPad has with an Apple ][.

It would not be the same language in any meaningful sense, beyond branding.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#50

Post by emmelaich »

_quasimodo wrote: post #27
Mithaldu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were excited in 1996-Feb-29 when 5.002 was released? Also, prototypes are widely used as syntax hints for the perl compiler and were never meant as signatures.

You were excited in 1996-Feb-29 when 5.002 was released? Not everyone on hn is in their early twenties, i suppose.

Exactly. Well hell, I did most of my time doing 'big' perl (as distinct from a better awk) with 4.019 and 4.036.

Now _they_ were fine vintages :-)

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