Why Perl Didn't Win
outspeaking.com
Why Perl Didn't Win
1–10 of 187 posts
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#2It's no wonder there are issues with Perl 5 to 6 transition they went from:
> They're going to merge Perl 5.12 and Perl 6
in "mid-2001" to:
> There's a Perl 5.8 on the way
in 2002. ^_~
That said, I think that anyone doing serious Perl 5.x work has long since abandoned the idea that Perl 6 has anything to do with Perl 5.x other than sharing the "Perl" name and Larry Wall. Maybe this is confusing to "outsiders" and the branding needs to change? It's not like the Perl 5.x line is not being maintained. Since Perl 5.10, there were some significant improvements, with consistent point releases coming out.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#3I'd disagree with the assessment of Python3 somehow being sunset in 2020. This 2020 End of Life stuff is a marketing tactic to sell it. There are companies with 500K line codebases of Python that won't be on Python3 in 2020, if ever. It's just not feasible when new features have to be shipped. Expect pain (not for the companies in question, for Python3), in the form of a fork. The book isn't closed on this one yet.
I can't help but think that we'll eventually be seeing "Why Python3 Didn't Win". Perl and Python both foolishly abdicated the throne. While shots are fired, I think Python3 could still recover with more compromises from its 'leadership'.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#4Perl 6 didn't win because the successors to Perl were Python and Ruby, not Perl 6. Agreed, Perl 6 is a sophisticated language, but Python and Ruby have mature VMs you can use today. For values of "today" ranging back in time upwards of ten years.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#5This article is pretty much spot on. I lived through this era and experienced the downfall of perl web applications first hand.
My employer produced an amazingly popular perl-based web application, using flat files for data storage because so few shared hosts had DBI and DBD::mysql installed. It's some gloriously horrible code. They did a ground-up rewrite and then hired me to maintain it, right as PHP was becoming popular.
They refused to do a PHP version until it was too late. Someone else translated our code into PHP, then rewrote it a few times before releasing it. Over just a year or two, our marketshare plummeted, and now the UBB is a distant memory. We couldn't deliver a competing product.
Even if perl hadn't lost the deployability battle, the perl 6 fiasco was what let python and company eat away at the mindshare that wasn't concerned with just web applications.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#6I'd disagree with the assessment of Python3 somehow being sunset in 2020. This 2020 End of Life stuff is a marketing tactic to sell it. There are companies with 500K line codebases of Python that won't be on Python3 in 2020, if ever. It's just not feasible when new features have to be shipped. Expect pain (not for the companies in question, for Python3), in the form of a fork. The book isn't closed on this one yet. I…
While you may end up being right, Perl6 is a much larger departure from Perl5 (than Python3 is from Python2). Can one even use CPAN with Perl6? Is it even possible to convert existing Perl5 CPAN packages to support both versions at the same time (like all of the PyPI packages that support both Python2 and Python3)?
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#7Anyone feeling that Python 3 is gonna do the same to Python as Perl 6 did to Perl?
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#8Anyone feeling that Python 3 is gonna do the same to Python as Perl 6 did to Perl?
Not at all. Unlike Perl 6, Python 3 1) exists 2) has a significant amount of library support and 3) is clearly intended to supplant Python 2. None of those points apply to Perl 6.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#9This article is pretty much spot on. I lived through this era and experienced the downfall of perl web applications first hand. My employer produced an amazingly popular perl-based web application, using flat files for data storage because so few shared hosts had DBI and DBD::mysql installed. It's some gloriously horrible code. They did a ground-up rewrite and then hired me to maintain it, right as PHP was becoming p…
I immediately knew it was Ultimate Bulletin Board when I read the first sentence of the second paragraph.
Re: Why Perl Didn't Win
#10Anyone feeling that Python 3 is gonna do the same to Python as Perl 6 did to Perl?
As someone who has been both a Perl and a Python programmer, I don't feel like Python3 is going to kill Python. Why?
- Python3 currently exists, and there is a large push to get the majority of the "big" packages to support it (many of which do currently support Python 2.x and Python3).
- It's possible for a Python package to support both Python 2.x and Python3 at the same time or to program the Python 2.x version in such a way that converters like 2to3 can do the conversion for you. I'm aware of no such tools or capabilities between Perl 5.x and Perl 6.
- Python3 isn't as ambitious as Perl 6 is/was.
Edit: As to point #2, I recall that there may have existed (maybe it still does?) some project to use Perl 6's "reprogram the grammar" capabilities to turn Perl 6 into Perl 5. I'm not sure how I really feel about that though. There was also a time when there was some buzz around Parrot VM[1] that was associated with Perl 6 (I don't know if it was some official partnership or just some announcement of Perl 6 support in Parrot).