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Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
201–210 of 463 posts
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had they done it fifteen years earlier, I think Perl could have been the language to learn for Data Science. It still is a fantastic language to slice, clean up, and extract information from text files, and it was already very widely used in bioinformatics.
I don't think the name change was the problem here, rather it wasn't complete until recently.
I'm pretty sure GP is referring to Perl 5, not the newly renamed Raku. Perl 5 had a lot of use in bioinformatics, and to my knowledge lasted quite a while after the general Perl exodus, until eventually being replaced by biopython.
If the confusion regarding Perl 5/6 never happened, it might have retained that popularity in that domain.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure but there's a reason that development has moved off of Perl.
For people who are curious as to why people moved to Python. Some will say because college kids are taught Python, but I think that is a side effect. Perl is an old language, pre OOP. It's a language from the 90s, when everyone was hacking together code not knowing what the future would be like. There is a lack of organization. Perl is like C in syntax, features, and in speed. Python is like C++. Every failing you ca…
People like easy to read languages. Many years ago, when I first got back into development, I decided to choose to learn Python or Perl. After doing some research, it seemed Perl was more widespread. But Python was easier to read, so I went that route instead(luckily). I think the popularity of Basic and Golang vs their competitors of the time help prove this point. People say that Go is only popular because of Google, but I honestly feel if Rust and Go switched owners, it would have played out the same way.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
That description also fits a camel.
A camel strikes me as unsophisticated yet perfect.
I understand that impression but I think it requires a different point of view. They are highly adapted in multiple quite complex ways. It's possible we're using divergent definitions of "sophisticated". I was using the one that means complex, developed, and refined for an environment rather than the definition of being tasteful, intellectually pleasing, and socially experienced.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it depends on what you're comfortable in? I myself have tons of Elixir scripts that I use to automate much of my life. It's replaced ruby as my go-to for one-off scripts.
I didn't know that Elixir had such a low-threshold for one-off programs. Have you tried Crystal? Both are on my list of programming languages to look into next, together with Elm, Reason and Zig.
Crystal is wonderful for one-off programs in my experience.
Elixir had a long startup time for one-off scripts in my experience, but Elixir’s syntax is still one of my favorites for scripting.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying to understand, what kind of scripting requires first-class concurrency that isn't fulfilled by say Python?
Why should first-class concurrency needs be required to script in Elixir? This question seems to imply that Python is somehow a default language and special requirements must be needed to justify writing in something else. Elixir is general-use and pleasant to write scripts in so seems reasonable to me for someone to do so if that's their thing.
Ovid2 said Perl6 has a good concurrency model
lliamander replied that Elixir does too and it's worth a look
To that, 7thaccount replied that Perl6 and Elixir fill different niches.
So far, it seems Perl6 fills a niche that requires scripting and first-class concurrency. My question then is: what is this niche that requires very solid concurrency but also scripting. In other words, what does Perl6 have in terms of concurrency that Python does not (given they are both scripting languages)?
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuinely curious - and not trying to be a jerk... but where do you find Perl fits well? I can only imagine needing it if I'm stuck on a legacy OS/strictly governed environment where it's the only option I have. (ie: governmental work etc.)
Brain dead workers. Ask what to do. Fetch the needed data. Do the thing with that job. Signal job completion or failure. Die. Wait for a supervisor to restart you for the next job.
Yep. Nowadays Erlang (or Elixir) would be my tool of choice for that, but before discovering those (or when that felt like overkill) a quick Perl script would be my way to go.
Incidentally, apply this to web requests/responses and you've invented CGI (where Perl was incredibly useful, even if PHP happened to be a bit more popular).
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying to understand, what kind of scripting requires first-class concurrency that isn't fulfilled by say Python?
I am not that familiar with Python, but the GIL has long prevented any real in-process concurrency. Perl has concurrency but it's complex, heavy, and poorly supported. Raku's approach to this is built to avoid all these problems (like Elixir).
I agree the GIL is a problem but it's only an issue for CPU-bound problems. Is there really an important amount of CPU-bound work that is written in a scripting language? If it's CPU-bound, wouldn't you want to use something lower level?
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying to understand, what kind of scripting requires first-class concurrency that isn't fulfilled by say Python?
I'm guessing because Python's concurrency relies on the Global Interpreter Lock. Although I think concurrent.futures might address that. Haven't worked with python concurrency libraries in a bit.
as I posted above:
I agree the GIL is a problem but it's only an issue for CPU-bound problems. Is there really an important amount of CPU-bound work that is written in a scripting language? If it's CPU-bound, wouldn't you want to use something lower level?
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#210Can someone give the rest of us some context on this?
Perl5 -> Perl6 has been highly contentious. Perl6 is basically a different language much to the chagrin of many Perl users. A lot of Perl users are entrenched in Perl5. FWIW: I'm unclear why people continue to use Perl at all, I moved on in 2011.
> I'm unclear why people continue to use Perl at all
It does the job