Re: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018

For me, the strength of Perl 5 in 2018 is that the code I am writing today looks quite different from the Perl 5 code I've written a decade ago, but the code I've written back then still works. The language evolves, and I can follow - in my own time. I don't have to convert my old classes to Moose but I can, and quite often I do because the code is so much more readable. I don't have to convert CGI programs to PSGI or to one of the web frameworks, but I can, and occasionally I do. And so on - other monks have provided plenty examples of modern Perl 5.

With Perl 6, we have Inline::Perl5, and maybe soon-ish a Perl 6-aware IDE, so I can use all my old stuff in new programs where I exploit those Perl 6 features which are somewhat cumbersome in Perl 5 (notably grammars and concurrency). So the journey just goes on. Modern Perl 5 has been heavily influenced by Perl 6, so the chasm that existed between the two languages ten years ago is now a gap that can be jumped over. And again, I can jump if I want, I don't have to.

This makes me absolutely relaxed with regard to selecting a programming language, and I like that.

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Re^2: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 12, 2018 at 21:26 UTC

For me, the strength of Perl 5 in 2018 is that the code I am writing today looks quite different from the Perl 5 code I've written a decade ago, but the code I've written back then still works.

This might never have occurred to me but it is the truth and a nice way to think about it. I wrote my first production script after 2 weeks of dabbling with Perl almost 20 years ago. It was strict-free 100% code smell but it worked exactly as it was supposed to—through brute force meets trial and error—and was something a (mostly) beginner could do.

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