401–410 of 573 posts
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Python? That doesn't make sense. Anyone who appreciates Perl would surely choose Ruby over Python.
Ruby is just as dead. Only thing it had going for it was Rails.
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> it is not the notorious "write only" language that many troll it to be I dispute that. I have worked with many languages, and Perl has always been one of the hardest to remember due to non-standard symbol abuse and a few strange semantics. There is a reason it has that reputation. Even writing it isn’t easy. I can describe the Python syntax after years of not using it. Perl? No way I remember it.
> I have worked with many languages, and Perl has always been one of the hardest to remember due to non-standard symbol abuse and a few strange semantics. For example?
print "[", +( join '', map { "-> $_" } @$_ ), "]" for @{$ref}I've been a perl zealot since 2005. I didn't even know "python" existed until around 2008 when I found a script file with a ".py" file ending in a fresh ubuntu install. I started going to perl conferences sometime after 2010 when someone on irc informed be about them. I learned so much in those conferences, mainly about the alternatives to cgi and the modern OOP "framework" named "moose". I thought I was in heaven. I…
Modern PHP is actually fine; it's largely avoided the issues perl has; adoption of the latest versions is quite high, and it's...fine. Not the best, not the worst, broadly comparable to other languages, and a far, far, far cry from what most people may think of when they hear "PHP". My last job used Node, the one before that used Python; I have personal preferences, but at the end of the day they're just tools, it's all fine. The "PHP: a fractal of bad design" blog post actually made a big impact on the community, and shocking number of the issues listed there have been solved, with rapid active progress ongoing. (Yes, I know, it still has issues, and people still hate it. No need to comment to let me know.)
And yet...
...there's a big chunk of the PHP community that just really isn't on board with any of this. Every time the core devs release a new language feature, vocal critics complain about how the language is becoming more "enterprisey" or "like Java". Even on the core dev team, when they vote about fixing some crazy broken feature of the language from the bad old days, a vocal minority is always against it. The language (thankfully) has not stayed still since 2002, but people are trying.
And of course, when we advertise to hire devs, if we say we're looking for "PHP devs", we end up flooded with applications from people who basically know how to install and configure plugins for PHP based CMSes, or from "senior devs" who have been hacking together procedural PHP scripts for 20+ years and have zero knowledge of software engineering principles, unit testing, etc. We've ended up hiring python devs to work on a php code base, not because no php devs are out there, but just because the community is so....weird. There are good engineers who happen to sometimes use PHP, but they rarely (if ever) identify as "PHP devs".
I dislike the JS ecosystem and it's constant churn and cult of the new, but sometimes you run across the reverse problem too.
I worked on Perl for a while, liked it. Back in 2008/9, the only option for Perl on Windows was Activestate Perl, whose community version was missing lot of features that would have made it much less painful(I am thinking of PPM particularly). That was one of the biggest gripes I had with Perl. We moved everything to Python as soon as we could get comfortable with it and haven't looked back since. Regarding Perl's on…
I even used that setup to package a couple Perl scripts with all their modules into PAR archive executables, circa 2011 I think.
> Regarding Perl's one liners, I feel they are what makes Perl very useful, but my preference is AWK over Perl for that.
I love the ability to pull in a CPAN module or two to really kick up a one-liner a notch without making it too long. Also, I like creating an alias to perl that loads up a few useful libs and the main project lib and putting it in the project path so I can use a one liner like a REPL and run small queries, reports, or even do complex DB queries/updates with it using DBIx::Class and all the helper methods I've created for this project's schema.
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Ok, so I wrote tons of Perl and am to this day a fan, but I don’t think one can call a blessed hash (or scalar for the fancy folks) an object _system_. It is flexible and fun and I do miss it. True story: years of passing functions to other functions and map/greps made the switch to FP Scala (another language I fear will die) a lot easier!
> I don’t think one can call a blessed hash (or scalar for the fancy folks) an object _system_. Perl first, then JavaScript. Did you know JavaScript classes are blessed hashes? They even take about the same amount of syntax. ("__proto__" vs "blessed", "prototype" vs "bless"). Old JavaScript made the blessing crude and obvious. Modern JavaScript lets you hide it in a "class" decleration. Which you can also do in Perl…
> They even take about the same amount of syntax. ("__proto__" vs "blessed", "prototype" vs "bless").
omg, I totally forgot that (I left day-to-day JS use a good decade ago, sorry!).
I've been a perl zealot since 2005. I didn't even know "python" existed until around 2008 when I found a script file with a ".py" file ending in a fresh ubuntu install. I started going to perl conferences sometime after 2010 when someone on irc informed be about them. I learned so much in those conferences, mainly about the alternatives to cgi and the modern OOP "framework" named "moose". I thought I was in heaven. I…
> perl has been the same since 2002 if you ignore perl 6 then you might as well ignore python 3. And even still, python 2 is dead. There are only a handful of languages as well maintained as Perl 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_5_version_history Perl maintains strict backwards compatibility. I can run code that was written decades ago. I really am curious what features you think Perl 5 lacks. > Another issue is…
I used to spout that off too, but I now think it is just a myth. When the leader/creator of the language abandons it and it sits there stagnate for years, what other "feature" can you advertise? I know, "strict compatibility"! I saw it as a feature as well and even used it as an excuse to not learn python.
But even worse it has tainted an entire generation of small business perl dev shops. They seem to think that they can't move to another language because every couple of years back compatibility in language X breaks and at the same time spout off how their perl CGI scripts from 1998 still work fine ("fine" because it hasn't been hacked yet). Ironically doing this all from their windows laptop that has broken compatibility through many release cycles.
Breaking compatibility and refactoring is a sign of health, not death! But now these old school dev shops have large customer bases on old perl who's customers are not used to paying for any kind "upgrade" (and now they never will be). Contrast that with every now and then on /r/django someone will post a question like "my development firm is wanting to charge me $3k to upgrade from django 1.2 to 2.0 before they will add any new features to my web shop. Is that a good deal?". Its just a fact of life now. Software needs to be upgraded. The only reason that perl apps aren't at the top of all security and sql injection attacks is because there are so few of them (combined with the fact that so much of "perl apps" are custom code from the ground up). Never upgrading your stuff is not a "feature".
It's the same with python 2.7 as well. That is because it is dead, it now has "strict compatibility"!
> I really am curious what features you think Perl 5 lacks.
That's a good question. Really, perl can do anything that python can. So what gives? I think the biggest thing that I struggle with just goes back to the "community". I'm trying to stay brief as not to out myself or my last company, but in most cases I was given requirements for a new project and I was off on my own. That's fine. But sometimes I'd be given requirements for a new project and then get micromanaged. As in literally told how to organize the entire project down to little bits like "when a user registers a new account, a function will return a random string 6 characters long and be sent via email to the user and this password will be stored in clear text". That is not the exact case, the real case belongs on codinghorror.com.
But the point I make is given requirements that break normal sane patterns, in python I could go to a mailing list or /r/python and post my issue and expect plenty of answers that I could then show my boss that he is not right. That does not exist in the perl world. I'm sure some perl guys will try to chime in and disagree but it is true. I have asked several question on /r/perl to get advice on really stupid architectural requirements but got 0 responses. The same goes for the perl mailing lists and irc. Its all dead. Many times I've posted to python lists pretending to be making a flask app or something just to get some advice on some webdev best practices, etc, not easy questions but just looking for a discussion. It's embarrassing on the perl side.
I've been a perl zealot since 2005. I didn't even know "python" existed until around 2008 when I found a script file with a ".py" file ending in a fresh ubuntu install. I started going to perl conferences sometime after 2010 when someone on irc informed be about them. I learned so much in those conferences, mainly about the alternatives to cgi and the modern OOP "framework" named "moose". I thought I was in heaven. I…
> perl has been the same since 2002 if you ignore perl 6 then you might as well ignore python 3. And even still, python 2 is dead. There are only a handful of languages as well maintained as Perl 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_5_version_history Perl maintains strict backwards compatibility. I can run code that was written decades ago. I really am curious what features you think Perl 5 lacks. > Another issue is…
Are these languages still used in some niches? Certainly, TCL is still big for scripting ASIC/FPGA design tools last I checked. Similarly Perl projects will still be used and maintained for a long time, it may well outlive us all.
But it's very hard to defend using Perl on a new project these days. I know I wouldn't. I have very little love for Python but I'd go with it instead of Perl almost every single time now. There was a time where CPAN was the killer feature of Perl. Now Python caught up while, as the parent points out, CPAN is slowly rotting due to unmaintained packages. NPM being a mountain of trash is entirely irrelevant frankly. And it's not like in its heydays every single CPAN package was a marvel of software engineering either.
>The care people put into packages like DBI was incredible, compared to anything I've seen on NPM.
See, even you use the past tense. There's no argument that DBI is great. That's not the point. Languages survive not because they're good or bad, but because they have community and corporate support. That's why PHP holds up pretty well while Perl slowly falls into irrelevance. We can lament it, we can try to fight it, but can't deny it.
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I'm no fan of Perl, but you can use $OUTPUT_AUTOFLUSH instead if you "use English;". So this isn't really a Perl language thing; it's a style thing. Other languages can be made to look really bad with poor style. The question then becomes what is culturally accepted, and what is not.
The problem is that nobody ever tells you these things, the documentation doesn’t cover them and as a result everyone still uses the terrible original syntax.
I've been a perl zealot since 2005. I didn't even know "python" existed until around 2008 when I found a script file with a ".py" file ending in a fresh ubuntu install. I started going to perl conferences sometime after 2010 when someone on irc informed be about them. I learned so much in those conferences, mainly about the alternatives to cgi and the modern OOP "framework" named "moose". I thought I was in heaven. I…
Python? That doesn't make sense. Anyone who appreciates Perl would surely choose Ruby over Python.
Although I suppose the way things are headed in a few years that might become... JavaScript, of all things. The theory that the world truly ended in 2012 becomes more appealing every day.
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Do you mean faster to write, or faster to run, or the combination of both?
Both I would guess. Perl in serial is already faster to run than Python, and as soon as you start using threads Perl blows Python straight out of the water. The only reason that stuff like tensorflow or numpy is not as dog slow as the rest of python is that they are bindings to c(++) or fortran libs. Writing faster is debateable, but Perl has tons of niceties like embedded regex syntax, string interpolation, one-line…
As for major versions...well...there's only been one significant change in this area (2 to 3) so I feel like maybe you're hyperbolizing a little :-)