What utility does Perl provide in a world dominated by python?
Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
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Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In the same boat on the "why haven't people moved on"... Perl use to be ubiquitous but over time it's really gone to the wayside vs. Python tooling for more complex stuff, and back to basic BASH for the simple scripting needs. Every time Perl comes up in a professional environment for me I'm reluctant to say I'm capable, because it's always a hacked-together mess from an engineer who's likely no longer with the compa…
It’s the Perl culture, to do even simple things in the weirdest way possible and everyone will call you a wizard. Whereas the Python community praises complex ideas expressed as simple code and frowns on tricks. That’s why all but the the most obsessive have moved on. And from what I’ve seen Perl 6 takes it to the next level.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#33From what I could tell, Raku appears to be from Rakudo, the Perl 6 compiler, which is a shortened form of rakuda-dou (="way of the camel" in Japanese). Rakudo also means "paradise". The "raku" from "way of the camel" means "camel", while the "raku" from "paradise" means "fun" or "enjoyable" (or "music").
Incidentally, it also happens to sound similar to "roku" (="six").
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#34Fifteen years too late. But I suppose better late than never.
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.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#35Can someone explain to me, for what kinda of new projects would they use Perl/Raku in 2019 at all?
A lot of my colleagues in NLP and text processing still prefer to write in Perl. Granted they are mostly the old guard but it is prevalent in academic language technology research.
.. in the old guard of language technology research I guess, because in my NLP lab, no one knows the first thing about Perl (everything is done in Python)
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In the same boat on the "why haven't people moved on"... Perl use to be ubiquitous but over time it's really gone to the wayside vs. Python tooling for more complex stuff, and back to basic BASH for the simple scripting needs. Every time Perl comes up in a professional environment for me I'm reluctant to say I'm capable, because it's always a hacked-together mess from an engineer who's likely no longer with the compa…
> it's always a hacked-together mess from an engineer who's likely no longer with the company.
Oh man, in 1996 I was at Nortel. Some Ms. C. in Computer Science (no longer with the company) left behind Perl cruft whose indentation levels didn't even match up:
whatever
{
}
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#37If anyone is interested in working with the language, AFAIK, DuckDuckGo's backend is primarily written in Perl.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the same boat on the "why haven't people moved on"... Perl use to be ubiquitous but over time it's really gone to the wayside vs. Python tooling for more complex stuff, and back to basic BASH for the simple scripting needs. Every time Perl comes up in a professional environment for me I'm reluctant to say I'm capable, because it's always a hacked-together mess from an engineer who's likely no longer with the compa…
> it's always a hacked-together mess from an engineer who's likely no longer with the company. (obviously this is VERY anecdotal to my career) That's what programming is.
> That's what programming is.
In my realm I need things to be supportable by lots of people. I use languages that are modern + people want to use, I document like crazy, I use opinionated frameworks that have good track records, I need to hire engineers that can support the code I/others write, etc etc. I don't find your comment to be true, and will even go as far to say I've worked with very clean legacy code.
Tangential: If you look at any "popularity of language" studies Perl has been on a downward spiral for over a decade. Ex: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/perl/
I see "well that's just x" as a poor argument for, well... anything.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#39I really wish the Perl 6 -> Raku change could let it catch up with other languages such as Python.
Edit: sorry for the confusion. I meant popularity-wise. I wish the change would clarify to people that Perl 6 and Perl 5 are basically two different languages and people should at least consider Perl 6 as an option when they start a new project.
Re: Larry Wall has approved renaming Perl 6 to Raku
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> FWIW: I'm unclear why people continue to use Perl at all, I moved on in 2011. Because it works. Scripts/software that works does not experience bit rot. As long as it works, people will continue to use it. Edit: OK, fine. It seems the downvoters are convinced that the code does in fact experience bit rot, and spoils with time. Probably like fish.
The environment changes, and old programs need to update to keep up with new data formats and remote services and security threats.