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What Happened to Perl 7?

blogs.perl.org

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Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#4

Post by 7r7292DuMfMz1Rh »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #2

I'm curious to know if anyone out there building new systems in Perl or is it all just maintenance mode for Perl based systems?

Unfortunately, yes, people are still building new systems in Perl. In my experience, it's been because existing infrastructure that new systems need is already written in Perl.

I'll note that if you use a strict subset of Perl, and write it well, with lots of unit tests, it's bearable to use. But it falls massively short when it comes to anything concurrent or async. And if you stray into the "clever" subset of Perl, frankly it becomes hell. The ecosystem is also pretty much dead, it's not unusual to find bugs in packages where the issue tracker hasn't been responded to in 10 years, and the issue for the bug you're interested in has been languishing for literally years.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#7

Post by davorg »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #2

I'm curious to know if anyone out there building new systems in Perl or is it all just maintenance mode for Perl based systems?

Speaking as a London-based freelancer specialising in Perl, I can tell you that the number of companies developing new systems in Perl is tiny (like, maybe, half a dozen).

Until four or five years ago, there was still plenty of maintenance work to be had, but even that has pretty much dried up now.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#9

Post by gjvc »

davorg wrote: post #7
lordofgibbons wrote: post #2

I'm curious to know if anyone out there building new systems in Perl or is it all just maintenance mode for Perl based systems?

Speaking as a London-based freelancer specialising in Perl, I can tell you that the number of companies developing new systems in Perl is tiny (like, maybe, half a dozen). Until four or five years ago, there was still plenty of maintenance work to be had, but even that has pretty much dried up now.

what are you going to do then?

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#10

Post by davorg »

7r7292DuMfMz1Rh wrote: post #4
lordofgibbons wrote: post #2

I'm curious to know if anyone out there building new systems in Perl or is it all just maintenance mode for Perl based systems?

Unfortunately, yes, people are still building new systems in Perl. In my experience, it's been because existing infrastructure that new systems need is already written in Perl. I'll note that if you use a strict subset of Perl, and write it well, with lots of unit tests, it's bearable to use. But it falls massively short when it comes to anything concurrent or async. And if you stray into the "clever" subset of Perl,…

> The ecosystem is also pretty much dead, it's not unusual to find bugs in packages where the issue tracker hasn't been responded to in 10 years, and the issue for the bug you're interested in has been languishing for literally years.

Yes. Very much this. Anecdotally, I'd estimate that, outside of the big, well-known modules, about 25% of the CPAN modules I try to use have bugs that render them unusable and unresponsive maintainers.

Here's a description of an example I found last year - https://dev.to/davorg/failing-to-get-product-information-fro... (my project to write a replacement module has stalled).

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