Phil

Thanks for the link. I found it amusing. This little part really tickled my soul:

Of course, Perl5 regexps are actually so complex that it's proven extremely difficult to write an interpeter for them. The Java classes implementing Perl5 regexps are about 7,000 lines of code, and if you look at java.util.regex.Pattern.java, you'll get a free peek into the Intern Project from Hell.

I mean, what do you say to a comment like this? "Too bad the PCRE/Python guys are smarter than the Java types?" or "Hmm, so Java is not a good language for implementing a regex engine in?", or should it just be "Use the force Luke, read the source.."?

Of course, the current blead sources for the regex engine, including only the two main C files comes to a whopping 13878 lines, (as of Patch 29100) so I guess the Java crew should be happy they managed to pare it down by half.... Although I do wonder how they managed to fit the regex optimiser into that amount of code.... Maybe really long lines? ;-)

This has been discussed to death. Let me just say, if you think the Perl community is going away any time soon, you are not paying very much attention. What else do we really need to keep a language alive?

Update: How hard did you try to find previous discussions about this? Not very hard, I would guess. A simple super search for titles of "dying" reveals the following fairly-recent threads:

• Well, *Is* Perl Dying?
• Perl is dying

Every time i read one of these pointless rants, i read the same arguments. Perl is confusing. Perl is awkward. Perl is too hard to maintain. I never read about these people getting over that and learning how to use the CPAN. I never see those people here at the Monastery. Perl is dead. Long live Perl. ;)

Funny thing is (referring to the last paragraphs of his rant), i wrote my compiler before i learned and starting using Perl.

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

IT Press: Bring out yer dead.
... a man puts perl on the cart ...
Yegge: Here's one.
IT Press: That'll be ninepence.
perl: I'm not dead.
IT Press: What?
Yegge: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
perl: I'm not dead.
IT Press: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Yegge: Yes he is.
perl: I'm not.
IT Press: He isn't.
Yegge: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
perl: I'm getting better.
Yegge: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
IT Press: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
perl: I don't want to go on the cart.
Yegge.: Oh, don't be such a baby.
....
you know the rest ... I couldn't resist.

I did a Super Search for "yegge" in root nodes, and found Perl is dying and Advocacy ammunition: perl vs java at Amazon.

Now, did you actually have anything to add?

I would be inclined to take anything written by someone at Amazon about Perl with a grain or two of salt. (Whew! I think I used up a month's worth of prepositions in that last sentence!) Widely simplifying from my limited experience at that interesting company, there seems to be a mythos there that for 'real' programming, you need C++, and that Perl is only good for 'hacks'. Steve and I didn't cross paths much while I worked there, and he's entitled to his opinion, but it doesn't count for much with me, since I have found Perl to be the most productive tool (for me) to get real work done.

I wonder how much his opinion would change if he used a modern version of Perl... note that his docs on the Range operator read:

Be aware that under the current implementation, a temporary array is created, so you'll burn a lot of memory if you write something like this: ...

That how it was in perl5.004. In 5.005, which came out over 8 years ago, this was fixed and the docs were changed to read: 'In the current implementation, no temporary array is created when the range operator is used as the expression in "foreach"'.

There have been what... about twenty-some releases since then? No wonder he's confused and thinks the language is dead...

One point in his defense though: he does say, "use Ruby". Personally, I think Perl6 should be abandoned and Ruby should be adopted as Perl7.

From what I've seen, perl 6 will fix a lot of the issues, but I really have no clue when it'll be released. On the other hand, if I need a language that has really good OO support right now, I'll just use Ruby. If I need a language that will give me speed and portability, I'll use C (with or without Perl/XS). If I need something to install on a bog-standard Win2000 server, i'll use Visual Basic. There have even be a few projects where Java was a good choice.

The point is, use the right language that works for you and your project. Ruby sucks at unicode but has terrific OO. Perl is sometimes inconsistent and can definitely be ugly but it has CPAN, is available on all UNIXes, easy (for me) to write and it's fast. Java is too much typing but it has pretty good threading and corporate support. C is hard to get right but works everywhere. Javascript has closures and a neat OO model but the syntax is ugly as hell.

In other words, pick the posion that will do the least damage :-)

Meh!

"But I don't care. I'm tired of fighting ignorance. I'm off to find smart people and do great things."

"I wrote a complete essay about this that I was ready to publish, but I decided it's perhaps a bit too controversial."

"They feel that learning another language would take years, during which time they lose their value and could easily become unemployed."

"After you write a compiler (which, to be sure, is a nontrivial task, but if there's some valid program out there that you couldn't ever write, then you're not justified in calling yourself a programmer), the disease simply vanishes."

The rant sounds like he wishes he had Larry's fame. Why take pot shots at him? What has that got to do with the value or lack there of in the matters of Perl? We didn't decide to use Perl just because Larry was interesting. Never met let alone seen the man. We are also not wedded to Perl. We use it heavily but we have found some things a little easier with Python.

Ahh well that's what Blogs are for I guess.....

It is titled "Stevey's Drunken Rants" for a reason. It's not like he promised, sober, serious analysis.

If you read a few of his other posts, he's actually quite impressed by perl and the perl community. Some of his essays kept me quite amused during my after lunch sleepy time.

Update: I read again his opinion on things like the ".." operator. The first time I read about that thing, I thought the designer was demented. 9 years of perl later... I'm sure of it

___________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

Do you mean instead of responding with a cogent argument, I engaged in an Ad Hominem attack?
Hmmmm... I'll have to think about that :)

BTW I have never promised my posts would be sober, serious analysis.



grep

One dead unjugged rabbit fish later

This is a rather amusing rant from an Amazon developer.

Correction. A former Amazon developer. He currently works for Google, and his current blog is somewhere else.

"True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want...I explicitly give people the freedom not to use Perl, just as God gives people the freedom to go to the devil if they so choose."

FWIW, the quote below is from a more recent rant located here:

As I've done for a great many other programming languages, I've bashed on Perl's technical weaknesses at length in the past. To my continued amazement, the Perl folks are the only ones who never get upset. They just say "Haha, yeah, boy, you're right, it sure is ugly. Heh. Yeah, so, um, anyway, I'm going to get back to work now..." It's awesome. I've gained so much respect for them. It's almost enough to make me go back to programming in Perl...

From the linked blog:

I started writing an internal blog at Amazon.com in summer 2004. It wasn't (and isn't) endorsed by Amazon; it's just my personal blog, where I wrote whatever was on my mind, usually at home late at night after a few glasses of wine. ..

and

Most of them are crap, or experimental at best. Some of them are pretty good -- at least I still laugh evilly at the mean jokes I made about Eclipse. Unfortunately, I haven't spent the time to put them in any order except chronological. Someday!

(Emphasis added.) Kind of a waste of electrons, if you ask me.

Move along, there's nothing to see here.

edit: typos

If you ask me, the guy was overworked and burned out. I do get all worked up about minor things myself very easily lately. Anyway I hope he feels better now.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

To be honest, whatever it was you needed me to do, I probably would have a working prototype done in perl before you finished writing that node. ;-)

As far as how you get promoted, it probably was not insignificant that I said something similar to the above to my manager in more than one meeting. "Ok, you want something to work kinda like ... this?" (turns laptop around) Of course, when he asked if I was ready to check it in, my response was "well, I just started it 30 minutes ago - give me a bit to test it, ok?" ;-)