Re^2: The first lambda language to go mainstream ?

> According to wikipedia, perl5 was released in 1994 while javascript only started appering in 1995, so perl is older.

Well the question was also about Perl4 and having references, IIRC the old typeglob mechanism to pass functions around is a legacy of Perl4

JS OTOH only introduced full functional mechanisms with version 1.2 in June 1997.

> But I think his point is in the "to go mainstream" part, I don't think perl reached that point yet, perl6 could do it perhaps.

hehe flaming potential! :)

IIRC both JS and Perl are listed in the top 10 of most used languages, and Perl was much earlier popular than JS.

But Crockford seems to be an ex-Java programmer who first learned scripting with JS.

For instance he gives some horrible advices in his book, no Saint of the monastery would ever give!

(like using || to assign undefined values a default value! Hei JS does like Perl type casting mapping 0 and "" to false !!!)

Cheers Rolf

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Re^3: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by Fox (Pilgrim) on Aug 11, 2010 at 14:31 UTC
It all depends on what 'mainstream' means. JS got a lot more attention because you simply can't use any other language to script sites.	[reply]
Re^4: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 11, 2010 at 19:35 UTC
Flash is quite popular.	[reply]
Re^5: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by rowdog (Curate) on Aug 12, 2010 at 18:48 UTC
Now that they're converging into ECMAscript, one could make the argument that Flash is just gussied up JavaScript, but that wasn't always true.	[reply]
Re^4: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 11, 2010 at 14:55 UTC
Perlscript, VBscript, TCL, ... CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James	[reply]
Re^5: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by Anonymous Monk on Aug 11, 2010 at 15:00 UTC
perlscript is NOT mainstream, neither is VBscript (VB might be), don't know about TCL	[reply]
Re^6: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 11, 2010 at 17:00 UTC
Re^7: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 11, 2010 at 19:33 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^5: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by Fox (Pilgrim) on Aug 11, 2010 at 15:20 UTC
sorry, but making sites only for IE won't do it anymore. Never heard of using TCL before, but as far as I searched it's only usable through a plugin, no good either.	[reply]
Re^6: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 11, 2010 at 17:03 UTC
Re^4: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by LanX (Saint) on Aug 11, 2010 at 19:08 UTC
It all depends on what 'mainstream' means. JS got a lot more attention because you simply can't use any other language to script sites. You are restricting mainstream to webclients, sites are quite often realized with Perl! :) IMHO mainstream means widely known and used. Dylan or Factor are't mainstream. Cheers Rolf	[reply]
Re^4: The first lambda language to go mainstream ? by rowdog (Curate) on Aug 12, 2010 at 19:07 UTC
It all depends on what 'mainstream' means. Indeed, and I find any definition of 'mainstream' that doesn't include Perl to be full of crap. For most of the 90's, CGI was practically synonymous with Perl. Sure, you could write CGI in C, C++, shell, or TCL, but almost nobody did. But hey, I'm sure the server side didn't count as 'mainstream'. Okay, so you could argue that was the past and Perl's dead. I still disagree. The vast majority of Linux distros include Perl in their baseline installation. You can talk about the lack of Linux on the desktop but you'd be a fool to discard the massive uptake of Linux (and thus Perl) in the server space. Perl comes as part OSX too. I suppose that means Apple isn't 'mainstream' either.	[reply]