in reply to Modern Perl and the Future of Perl

I see a disconnect between the blockquote and your question. The blockquote discusses the practical pitfalls of using a language with as little style enforcement as Perl, and you ask when we can start using convenient, new-ish features rather than restricting ourselves to old Perl.

I do not believe that Perl's newer features, while wonderful in their own right and supportive of good programming practices, will eradicate the problem traced in the quote. Undisciplined programmers will still generate undisciplined Perl code, and Perl is a language where undisciplined code can really sting.

Had non-strict coding been end-of-lifed, I might see light at the end of the tunnel, but short of a coup like that, I see the new features helping the disciplined coders more than anyone else.

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Re^2: Modern Perl and the Future of Perl
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Dec 20, 2007 at 20:07 UTC
    Undisciplined programmers will still generate undisciplined Perl code, and Perl is a language where undisciplined code can really sting.

    I agree, in part. I've heard Ward Cunningham say that one reason Smalltalk failed is because it was so easy to make messes in Smalltalk. They weren't painful enough to enforce discipline. That's not what I wanted to say though.

    Max's post goes on to suggest that spreading the good word about all of the nice new features of Perl and the CPAN that make using Perl and the CPAN in 2007 much nicer than using Perl in 1998, or 1995, is tremendously important. I agree. How can we do that better?

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Re^2: Modern Perl and the Future of Perl
by jettero (Monsignor) on Dec 20, 2007 at 19:47 UTC
    Oh wow, I don't think it's the "style enforcement" at all as much as that the main books are a little dated. Programming Perl 3rd ed was y2k! Am I missing a later version?

    The people that are really into style enforcement already moved to python.

    -Paul

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      I respectfully disagree. Many of us who use Perl care very much about good style and maintainable code, and some more guidance in the books would be helpful.
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        Style and style enforcement are two different things. Perl does not enforce style in any meaningful way.
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Re^2: Modern Perl and the Future of Perl
by lecar_red (Acolyte) on Dec 21, 2007 at 20:54 UTC
    I don't think Perl will be alone with these issues. I think Perl has had more years to grapple with a language that is very versatile and a community that is willing to allow its users to make up their own mind (be the end result pretty or ugly, nice or naughty).

    I think Ruby, Javascript, etc... will have these same (and difficult) issues once they age and have larger existing code bases. (I think javascript has this problem already except now there are 100 magic libraries to choose from that many do similar things.... like CPAN without the nice-ness of CPAN).
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