Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
good chemistry is complicated,
and a little bit messy -LW
 
PerlMonks  

Re: Why Perl in 2020

by Discipulus (Canon)
on Dec 09, 2020 at 22:08 UTC ( [id://11124914]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Why Perl in 2020

Hello ait and thanks for this meditation, I read it twice.

Just my 2cents (and if you dont already know, they are really 2cents: I'm a Perl only programmer, with minimal excursions in other languages and sadly my perl activity is no more bound to my employment).

Making things complex is part of the business. While Perl defines itself as postmodern it is really more humanistic exactly because its malleability. As you know, Perl is extremely portable and supports a wide range of complexity. As you described very well, it just run from scratch and can be used as prototype or can be extended to a full featured program, gradually. This is what fascinate me after so many years: the programmer is in the center not the language nor the business scheme.

> .. using bare metal and real people.I mean real programmers and sys admins who actually knew what they were doing to fine tune a real architecture.

This sounds so wise that clash against what I see everyday around me.

Why cars have not interchangeable engines? For the same reason everything nowadays is virtualized and the real service is beyond many layers of abstraction and complexity, or as you said, layers of shit. Complexity does not sum up: it multiplies, but do you want companies managers understand this? Good luck.

The fragmentation of the work (and of workers too) is a central point in the economy model we are living in. The future is toward specialization and we will be (or our children will be) so specialized at the point we will be unuseful. 2050 or 3020? We will be at the best feeders for machine learning programs.

I suspect the same is valid for programming languages: take a glance to what microsoft is pushing. No one is anymore able to grab the big picture and the tools they use intentionally cover the picture with fog and.. clouds.

Virtualization is handy but was the ram cast into the market to sell incredibly powered hardware and to make it economically affordable you must put everything and more there adding many layers of complexity in one single shot.

Here in Eataly students learn Python at univeristy and I had a little (money driven) excursus with it. Basically is like playing Lego studing Architecture and when it comes to do more serious things I saw them installing a gargantuelian mega framework with many dead ends installation issues and unresolved dependencies (..how much I love Perl errors!) and when you finally get it installed you merely feed data into others work hoping they manage your data correctly.

Who want the programmer freedom (and the expresiveness, quality and geniality) as the center of the discourse? We want this but not companies.

In the meanwhile we can fight our battles as Perl Community in the fields that will be crucial in the near future and I'm with you when you say that will be a stamina run. Few fields I see as critical are, as VinsWorldcom pointed, networking but I'd stress also on maintaining as more as possible the wide platform compatibility (Microsoft is ugly but is a big share of the market and sometimes our community is too choosey..), parallelization (a big thank to MCE), web (and here we are gaining positions), and unexplored lands as phones, games and robots..

> It’s time for a new dawn of The Programming Republic of Perl.

I'm with you! Even if I suspect the ongoing iron heel does not like very much the Republic part.

Good luck to Perl and to our wonderful community for the next year and next eras!

L*

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Why Perl in 2020
by bliako (Monsignor) on Dec 11, 2020 at 10:46 UTC
    Making things complex is part of the business.

    Today this observation is common among almost everybody. I will add "Making useless things" ("useless" in every sense of the word), and "inventing new (consumer) needs" (invent vs discover) and "working more (stressful) hours". But why? We were told that the Free Market and especially that "Invisible Hand" will take care of itself and select the most optimum solutions for our comfort and happiness as human beings. Today it is obvious that this is pre-conditioned on profit aligning with happiness. A claim that it was so lame, in hindsight.

    I have already expressed my opinion in other posts about the above and how Perl's TIMTOWTDI is a good thing, in that it allows for the exploration of solution space. I would like to see TIMTOWTDI be integral in any future political and economic system (with safeguards against "TIMTOWTDI to screw you!") as this one will either eat us or we will eat it. The Programming Republic of Perl (the ideology of this statement and also the character of the community) can be a bigger thing than just InfoTech.

    bw, bliako

      Wurd.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://11124914]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others having a coffee break in the Monastery: (8)
As of 2024-03-29 15:26 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found