Perl and the Future

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Re: Perl and the Future by RonW (Parson) on Mar 19, 2015 at 19:39 UTC
I have volunteered to teach programming. I enjoy doing it. The one time I was able to persuade a coordinator to schedule a Perl class, it was listed as "advanced" despite the fact that I had told the coordinator that I would target the class to beginning programming. When I asked him about why it was listed as advance, he told me he was told that Perl is an advanced language, not suitable for beginning learning programming. I was able to persuade him to relist it as "beginner", but despite the success of the class, he decided to not accept me, again - unless I was willing to teach Python or Javascript. I think it gets down to Python source code looks "less scary" than Perl or other languages. And Javascript is "the language" the all web browsers support.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl and the Future by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Mar 19, 2015 at 20:02 UTC
I think it’s awesome that you did/do that. I don’t think it’s an issue of scariness. I think the issues are ageing code looking messy compared to the promise/hype of new toys, lack of applications, and negative campaigning. Contrary to what everyone says every political season, negative campaigning, FUD, works. A large portion of the python crowd is vocal, hostile, and shameless whereas the majority of the Perl community is live and let live, the best tool for the job, there is more than one language with which to do it. The Java marketing engine and M$FT certification pyramids also drive Perl down in other ways. I think being more vocal about the specific places Perl is better than other languages would help a lot; and not just regexen because that has become something of an albatross; yes, we love and need regular expressions but not the dirty mini-language of Perl’s. Perl is faster than Ruby and no slower than any of the others; with XS it can be better still. Catalyst is more flexible than Rails and there are many other Perl-based choices that, thanks to PSGI, are trivial to mix and match. Perl’s Unicode support is just the best. Perl’s defect density is the lowest. Perl questions are almost always answered accurately and quickly on StackOverflow and PerlMonks. Perl’s notions of scope are better than Python’s. Every single thing about Perl is better than PHP (except availability of out of the box applications and this is a actually a serious problem for Perl). If someone can just absorb one or two facts of points where Perl is objectively superior to alternatives then it becomes a viable peer again and not just a confused set of anti-Perl statements from competitors who don’t know any better. (Update: missing word added.)	[reply]
Re: Perl and the Future by chacham (Prior) on Mar 20, 2015 at 14:45 UTC
Perl is no longer the "cool" new language Being the cool language gets people to use it and find its niche, whether large or small. Perl has that already. It's quick, its fast, and its beautiful. Unless seasoned programmers and system administrators disappear overnight, i doubt Perl will leave the scene anytime soon. (We can talk about it after COBOL fades away.) Once a niche is found, pushing the language elsewhere is just plain silly. Whenever there is more than once choice to provide a solution, we can create three categories, where: X is best, X is worst, and where there is no best and worst. We should not try to push Perl where it doesn't belong. Just where it is best, and people who prefer it can use it elsewhere, where the programmer's preference is the deciding factor. Perhaps the only time to push Perl would be where people don't realize it is the best language for the job. I did that at one company where a COBOL programmer tried to show how COBOL and entire job setup would be best to process reports. I had to explain to the entire team why Perl was the best language, and it was done so and ran brilliantly. (Unfortunately politics came into play and it was rewritten in VB! :( ) -- When i read the title in my head just now: Perl and the <echo, reverb, or whatever>Future</echo, reverb, or whatever> like a 50s TV show. Also, stating "I thought I'd try to stimulate some discussion" is probably the worst way to stimulate discussion. Something like that is said as an explanation in afterthought, if at all. The best way to stimulate discussion is to go out on a limb and state your own opinion, with no mitigating prefaces, no desires for reply, and to state it well.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl and the Future by Dumu (Monk) on Mar 24, 2015 at 16:44 UTC
Perl is the cool language to me. I don't even want to learn Python. Any language without whitespace freedom is ridiculous to me. (Ruby and Lua can wait till I am a Perl master. Scheme may get a look-in at some point sooner.) We should stop saying "Perl is no longer cool". Perl is incredibly cool. People who don't like Perl are what is "not cool", at least until they are proven cool in spite of the massively uncool drawback of not liking Perl. (My dear cousin, a talented PHP developer, gets a pass on this one. Despite being fairly cranky until his 9th coffee and rollup. Just because.)	[reply]
Re^2: Perl and the Future by logicrime (Initiate) on Mar 24, 2015 at 02:41 UTC
My dad has written COBOL almost exclusively for something close to 30 years, and has made a very pretty penny for doing so. I have read some of his code, and it was a glorious thing, despite the inelegant nature of COBOL itself. Thing is, he doesn't want to learn new languages because he doesn't feel like he needs to. He lacks the Perlis aspect of programming languages. I am learning Perl to both make some money and to make my code in other languages as well. I don't think that Perl is the language to end all others, and I don't think that such a language will ever exist. That having been said, I think a major contributing aspect of why Perl popularity is wounded lately is because of web programming and the dissolving frontier of the delineation of front end and back end systems. Node.js is a great example of the blurred lines we are seeing nowadays. Javascript started out as a simple way to get graphics to jump around on web pages, and now it's powering the crypto in my browser, and the databases in web apps, and who knows what else, right? Well, Perl could just as easily do these things, as could practically any other marketable language, if only the time and effort was spent on it.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl and the Future by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Mar 20, 2015 at 16:03 UTC
Agree, with afterword especially. :P I think where there is no clear best and worst is an ideal time to push Perl. This is how a language becomes the best choice. No clear winner exists. A hacker uses her favorite language to create a library or tool or application. Ta! A clear winner is born.	[reply]
Re^3: Perl and the Future by chacham (Prior) on Mar 20, 2015 at 17:01 UTC
Ah, so you're saying if there is no clear best, and the programmer does not already have a preferred language, to suggest Perl. Not a bad idea. Not at all.	[reply]
Re: Perl and the Future by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Mar 19, 2015 at 14:08 UTC
My personal take on the “popularity,” or perceived lack-thereof, of the Perl language ... is that it is irrelevant. There is always a new language coming along, and new projects might be started in one of those. But the vast majority of software that is in-service is so-called “legacy” software ... existing software, mission-critical, and by the way “it works just fine, thankye.” Therefore, one of the most important “life skills” for any professional programmer, in my opinion, is adaptability. To quickly learn how a system was written and how to maintain that system without attempting to rewrite it. You could say exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reasons, about any legacy system that was written in Python, Ruby, or Lua. <<language_x>> does not need to be popular with the up-and-coming generations in order to be relevant, and most of the languages they’re advocating right now will in due course become “cool” if measured by the same yardstick. (They just don’t know it yet.) . . . Aside: And as for “what’s about to become very significant, especially in the apps/mobile world, I will cordially suggest that something’s on-the-scene now that will ... along with other tools in the same vein ... sweep both web-development and app-development off its feet, by introducing the notion of compiling one strongly-typed(!) source language to multiple native targets. That revolutionary language is called Haxe, along with OpenFL which is built on top of it. You won’t be writing directly in JavaScript anymore, nor will you be running around on “HTML5 website-in-an-icon crutches” when you want to deploy a mobile app, or wondering if device-X has enough market potential for you to “start over from scratch” writing “your app” for it. That toolset hasn’t yet hit the main stream, but it is illustrative of just what kinds of changes can occur. These are not “yet another way of doing the same thing in the same way,” but a fundamental and disruptive change in the way that things are done which meaningfully addresses the costs of doing it.
Re^2: Perl and the Future by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Mar 30, 2015 at 19:15 UTC
I put together a few things in Haxe several years ago. It is nice to be able to use the same core language with JavaScript, ActionScript, direct to Flash, NekoVM, or C++ source. I see there's an even better selection of targets now. At the time, there were separate libraries for each target some of which had overlapping things I felt could be combined into a more standard library. Is there more common ground and less target-specific stuff these days?	[reply]
Re^2: Perl and the Future by kmadhyan (Initiate) on Mar 31, 2015 at 08:31 UTC
I have been the Perl Developer for last 8 years. I believe the Perl Community is not providing any professional certifications. It could have been a great tool to market the language. Still believe Perl is great language but lacks the marketing skills. Also Perl 5.000 was released on October 17, 1994. It has been almost 20 years Perl Community has been releasing the maintenance releases, World had been Waiting eagerly for Perl 6.	[reply]
Re^3: Perl and the Future by Anonymous Monk on Mar 31, 2015 at 08:45 UTC
professional certifications Cerifications for Perl maintenance releases No, they're more than just maintenance releases, read the `perl5*delta`s and enjoy the new features. Also some great new modules have come along - Moose, Mojolicious, etc. Sorry, but if you believe the things you are writing, I suggest that it possible that it is you who hasn't been keeping up-to-date, not Perl.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Perl and the Future by einhverfr (Friar) on Apr 16, 2015 at 12:14 UTC
It has been almost 20 years Perl Community has been releasing the maintenance releases, World had been Waiting eagerly for Perl 6. I see why people get that impression. However, when you get down to it, Perl 6 (which I understand to be expected to be out this year) really is a different language. I am not sure whether I like it or not (it definitely has a second system feel to it). Yes, Perl 5 came out just over 20 years ago. But the last 5 years have been quite different than what came before. Perl 5 is a great language (I also like REBOL btw), and one of the real strengths is the fact that it has the flexibility to move between OO and other paradigms quite easily. Not everything is an object like it is in Python, Javascript, or Perl 6.... I don't see Perl 6 supplanting Perl 5 any more than C++ has supplanted C. Yes they will have different niches but.... more likely they will grow up together,	[reply]
Re: Perl and the Future by Dumu (Monk) on Mar 25, 2015 at 13:44 UTC
We need to put Perl in secondary schools. That's where I first heard about C, and thought it was what I should be programming in. When I had my first tech job, as a web designer, I was actually trying to write a C program to mess around with text data while I was there, using "Bloodshed C++" or something - the only freeware compiler I could find for Windows. (I think I found out about gcc, but I was too rookie to understand how to build or install it.) Anyway, I never finished that task. If only I had known Perl, I could have whipped up a script in minutes. (Well, probably many minutes. But it would have got done.) In fact I got exposed to Perl for the first time in that job, in the form of CGI visitor counters. I looked at the code and thought "what is this mess that looks a bit like C"?. Sadly, it was 7 years before I picked up Perl again. Get to the youngest developers you can. I want my daughters to learn Perl as early as possible. Probably not as their first programming language, though. I'm still teaching them to read at the moment... Congratulations, hangon for suggesting this and especially RonW for actually getting out there and doing it!	[reply]
Re: Perl and the Future by Dumu (Monk) on Mar 25, 2015 at 13:52 UTC
NB: at Geekuni, Andrew Solomon has created various online Perl courses, including a beginner course. These are aimed at adult learners, as the name suggests. But that should be about right for older secondary-level students too.	[reply]
Re: Perl and the Future by hda (Chaplain) on Apr 05, 2015 at 08:20 UTC
It is interesting to consider this issue from the vantage point of human social behavior. We people are basically flock animals, most of us tend to do what others in our tribe do since we fear be left alone. If some software, tool or whatever is what prevails in your university/workplace/community then it is very likely that you will end up doing/using just the same as others do/use. If there are better or cooler alternatives it is really a secondary issue, as peer pressure is a very important factor in humans and changing behavior requires a crisis or a long term open mindedness and commitment not usually seen in humans. Have you heard any of these?: Why change? Perl? What? Python/R/Matlab are what we use here and they are perfectly OK for our work! Most scientists like me either have no idea of what Perl is, or think it is just a text parser. There is nothing wrong with Perl or with these people, it is just that things became this way because the way we humans are. There is nothing that R or Python can do that Perl Data Language (PDL) cannot do. It is just that PDL did not catch on a large scale in the science community. The system is now locked in a different mode. In my opinion, there is nothing sad here, just a consequence of how we humans are. As for me, I love Perl and I think it is very useful. I do use R when I have to talk to others, but do a lot of my work in PDL, and I am more than fine with it!	[reply]