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Why is perl losing its touch?

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Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#21

Post by erikb »

maxharris wrote: post #11

I think it's better to flip the question around: I make my living writing single-page web apps in JavaScript. These days, everything I do, even on the server, is in JavaScript. What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

I have to agree. There's nothing you need Perl for, and nothing it specifically offers. Like if you want to do something in Wordpress you can only use PHP, no choice. If you want to code a Linux driver you have to use C. If you want nice features like awesome readability you choose Python. If you want awesome power you use some kind of Lisp or Haskell.

There is not a single (well known) reason for using Perl. Even if it's 10% better and faster than any other language without a unique selling point the cost of switching is just too high in most cases.

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#22

Post by _pmf_ »

maxharris wrote: post #11

I think it's better to flip the question around: I make my living writing single-page web apps in JavaScript. These days, everything I do, even on the server, is in JavaScript. What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

> What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

Well, for a start, it's relevant for more than 3 months.

Asking for doing something 100 times better is quite a mouthful, coming from a JS developer.

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#23

Post by Mithaldu »

henriksen wrote: post #17
kbenson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which falls prey to the fact that people don't need to disambiguate "perl" when searching, but often do for "python". Changing it to "perl" and "python language" isn't very useful either, as it so severely limits the python query as to be unusable. To be clear, I don't doubt there is a drop in Perl mindshare and usage, I just don't think the original comparison, or the alternative one you posted, really shows a relat…

How about "programming perl/python". a graph very similar to OP's http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=programming%20perl%2C...

That's identical to " programming", which gets a boost because python gets disambiguated.

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#25

Post by Mithaldu »

yomism wrote: post #19
kbenson wrote: post #6

It's fairly obvious that the python programming language results are fairly drowned out by the Monty Python and snake results, as illustrated by all the news headlines shown for python, and by related topics and queries. That's not to say that the trend shown is entirely incorrect, just that it would be mostly coincidental to the data shown here.

Well, you can try selecting the right category: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=perl,+python&cmpt=q&c...

To be honest, i'm not too sure how trustable that data is, given the odd details like the regional interests and that sharp change in this graph: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5&q=JavaScript%2C...

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#26

Post by __david__ »

maxharris wrote: post #11

I think it's better to flip the question around: I make my living writing single-page web apps in JavaScript. These days, everything I do, even on the server, is in JavaScript. What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

> What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)?

A concise POSIX interface. Conciseness in general, really. How many node one-liners do you see?

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#27

Post by kuni-toko-tachi »

Perl always will be my favorite language. Its absolutely a joy to write. What's interesting to me is that all the things that people like about JavaScript, Perl had first, and I think better (closures, first class functions).

The criticisms that people had about Perl, such as that it langrage like line noise was unfortunate. Being able to tell whether something was a scalar, array, or hash by the character that preceded it was helpful.

Being able to slap a set of braces around code to create a closure was also much better than needing to do the same in a function like JavaScript.

Perl formed some much new ground. CPAN was the predecessor of npm, etc.

I'm just glad to be able to write functional code again through JavaScript, just like when I wrote Perl. I don't miss writing Java (or any static typed object oriented language) at all, and hope I never will again. I just hope that ES6 doesn't turn JavaScript engineers into object oriented programmers.

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#28

Post by blowski »

pspencer wrote: post #4

This one page isn't a good indicator of a language's popularity. It probably includes results referencing Monty Python, as indicated by the news article headlines, or the animal python. The TIOBE index might be a better indicator of programming popularity using internet search results: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... but that's still not perfect. You could also look at the number of jo…

Looking at HTML, CSS, Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, Perl... they're all losing popularity. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php%2C%20ruby%2C%20cs...

Looks like this internet thing was just a passing fad after all.

EDIT: Even more interestingly, there is an inverse relationship between searches for PHP and pizza. What does this mean? http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php%2C%20pizza&cmpt=q...

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#29

Post by vorg »

pspencer wrote: post #4

This one page isn't a good indicator of a language's popularity. It probably includes results referencing Monty Python, as indicated by the news article headlines, or the animal python. The TIOBE index might be a better indicator of programming popularity using internet search results: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... but that's still not perfect. You could also look at the number of jo…

Tiobe is gamed bigtime by promoters of some of the smaller languages in the 21 to 50 range, and postings for IT jobs that don't exist is a con that's been going on for decades.

Re: Why is perl losing its touch?

#30

Post by sah88 »

adregan wrote: post #12

I compared perl and JavaScript: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Perl%2C%20JavaScript&... And they both have a similar decline.

Javascript is ~2x more popular at the start but is ~8x more popular now.

The absolute decline looks similar but given javascript's higher starting value the relative decline is much less.

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