Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly • Hacker News Board

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#431

Post by cutler » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #413

proverbialbunny wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Perl back in at the turn of the millennia. My first data science equivalent projects were in Perl. To this day I can not find anything quicker to prototype in. Python is slow in comparison. Perl is great for quickly hacking something together for R&D purposes. Also, if you need to write something custom, Perl runs so much faster than Python and R. I, like many people, stopped using Perl beyond a quick script…

I wrote a lot of popular web apps in Perl, some that appeared in NY Times and Time mag. I quit around 2010 and went over to php which is easier. Wrote a great app and built a successful software biz around it. I think 2010 may have been when Perl 6 felt hopeless and there was no clear leadership or direction in the community. Mod_perl was the sh*t back in the late 90s for super high performance web apps on Apache. Th…

What's also forgotten is the Perl community's endless procrastination in adopting a meta-object protocol (MOP) and the too-late arrival of Miyagawa's brilliant contribution - PSGI/Plack. These 2 factors, I believe, led to Perl being overtaken by Rails, Django and the various PHP frameworks.

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#432

Post by jfim » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

cutler wrote: post #401

py_or_dy wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby is just as dead. Only thing it had going for it was Rails.

In Startup Land Rails is still thriving. Check out jobs on Angel.co and HN Who's Hiring.

Is there even a good alternative to Rails?

As far as I know, it's still the best option there is for quickly building a MVP on the web if one isn't building a SPA.

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#433

Post by jacobush » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

xyproto wrote: post #386

py_or_dy wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby is just as dead. Only thing it had going for it was Rails.

Ruby is doing well as a configuration format. Look at Vagrant and Homewbrew, for example. Also, there is Crystal, for compiling something very similar to Ruby, to native.

And that Ruby syntax slapped on Erlang

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#434

Post by cutler » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

OOPMan wrote: post #429

cutler wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Startup Land Rails is still thriving. Check out jobs on Angel.co and HN Who's Hiring.

I think you mean in San Francisco Startup Land...the other startup lands are less wedded to Ruby these days

London stats actually ;).

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#435

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

py_or_dy wrote: post #306

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…

> A few years later one of the newer employees on the customer support team started spouting off about "python" and how it was so easy to learn. He was always blabbing about terms I'd never heard of like "generators", "list comprehensions", "decorators", etc. I looked them up and learned they were just abstract constructs with fancy names that are supported in most any language. So I just figured he was some idiot that didn't really know anything. Otherwise, why would you be blabbing about abstract constructs?

> I can understand how a 50 year old perl dev (the typical age) would hate javascript and instead put as much code in the back end using all kinds of horrid html templates and never ending form post/refresh/repopulate cycles... I can see the "why should I learn javascript if i know perl" ideology, but what blew me away is a constant "why should I learn SQL if I know perl" ideology. Yes I'm serious.

You don't see how this is the same thing?

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#436

Post by p1necone » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

I'm trying to work this out but not having much luck - Perl 6 was a "lets make a bunch of breaking changes and modernize Perl a bit", and now that's branched off as a new language called Raku.

Now there's Perl 7, which is sort of the same idea as Perl 6 was, but less radical with the changes? Are the same people working on both? Is Larry involved with both?

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#437

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

jfim wrote: post #432

cutler wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Startup Land Rails is still thriving. Check out jobs on Angel.co and HN Who's Hiring.

Is there even a good alternative to Rails? As far as I know, it's still the best option there is for quickly building a MVP on the web if one isn't building a SPA.

Is Rails quicker and easier than, say, Django? Sure. Is it quicker and easier by enough to make it worth having another language in your stack? Not really, IME.

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#438

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

throwaway373438 wrote: post #309

DonHopkins wrote: post #173

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That certainly doesn't solve the problem of other people showboating their knowledge of obscure Perl sigils by using those ridiculous line-noise abbreviations in code you're trying to use and understand, so you have to look up each bit of obscure punctuation in its particular context in order to understand the code. If hard-to-read-and-remember syntax exists, people WILL use it. And some people will make a POINT to u…

If what you're saying is true, then why aren't similar criticisms raised against Ruby? Most of the same obscure variables are also present in Ruby. "If hard-to-read-and-remember syntax exists, people WILL use it" This statement doesn't appear to hold up under scrutiny.

> If what you're saying is true, then why aren't similar criticisms raised against Ruby? Most of the same obscure variables are also present in Ruby.

Not with the sigil names, are they?

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#439

Post by adolfojp » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #403

py_or_dy wrote: post #306

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…

I feel you. I'm currently at a startup that, somewhat by accident, ended up writing their backend in PHP. 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…

I heard the "PHP is becoming like Java" argument in 2005 when PHP 5 came out. I'm surprised to hear it's still a thing.

Funny enough I heard the same thing about JavaScript about 5 years ago when ES6 came out.

Re: Perl 7 is going to be Perl 5.32, mostly

#440

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #120

jqcoffey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Traditional JavaScript has a notoriously poor object system yes. If those are the only two languages you know then I guess Perl's object system doesn't seem so bad, but that shouldn't be a defense of either language.