Why is perl losing its touch?

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

Post by nwp90 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #15

AshleysBrain wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing 'perl language' and 'python language' shows a similar trend: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=perl%20language%2C%20...

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…

Post by cms07 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #41

Because everything perl can do python can do better? Okay that is a though claim but perl and python fit about the same area - a dynamically typed scripting language that can take over when that shell script gets too big and all the way up to a full-blown app or website, but you are not going to win any prizes for speed - but python doesn't have all the weird crap that goes along with perl (what exactly does $#% mean…

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:50 PM UTC

jafaku wrote: post #37

kuni-toko-tachi wrote: post #27

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 prece…

Which popular language nowadays doesn't have closures? Even the so hated (by HN) PHP has had that for many years already.

    def multiplier_maker(a):
      def temp(b):
        return b * a
      return temp

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #34

erikb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No language handles regular expressions as easily as Perl. Perl's power has always been in its power to do text processing. That said, it's objects and pointers are a joke. At least Perl 5's are. As for Perl 6, I don't know. It couldn't hold my attention for 15 years.