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Perl -- the world's premier write-only language.
by BudVVeezer 17y ago
Perl -- the world's premier write-only language.
- hga 17y agoWell, it has survived APL and TECO....
- melling 17y agoA bit of a cliche response. The fact is one can write maintainable code if they so choose and 20+ years later people are still solving real problems with it. It would be great if they cleaned up the language a little and finish Perl6, but in the meantime, Perl 5.x and CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/ http://www.cpan.org/) are still quite relevant.
- njl 17y agoI've been under the impression (tongue firmly in cheek) that Perl 6 is called "Ruby".
- mmaunder 17y agoNo, it's called Rakudo. http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ http://dev.perl.org/perl6/
- njl 17y agoMind, I'm not deeply involved in either the Perl or Ruby communities, but... The de jure successor of Perl 5 might be Perl 6, but the de facto successor is Ruby. That is where the momentum and mindshare has gone; my impression is that Perl is easing back into it's old home as AWK's big brother. In all honesty, how often do you hear about somebody writing a web application in Perl these days? While my personal experience isn't really admissible as evidence, all the people I know who used to write web apps in Perl are now writing web apps in Ruby. A bunch of the ones who used to do system administration with Perl are now working at Opscode doing systems administration in Ruby.
- berntb 17y agoIf you argue web apps, at least locally, PHP is kicking ass with Perl, Ruby and Python. Amongst others. (And then, the hype and FUD is quite heavy on the ground, re Perl. Not least on HN.)
- peterwwillis 17y agothis is, to me, evidence of why Perl is a great language. it's not something people pick up to write web apps. you can write very good web apps with it, but there are better options. but you can also use it to write virtually any kind of application - and the libraries and supporting modules already exist to allow you to complete it, quickly and well. you can probably use Perl for a wider array of apps than any other language (largely due to CPAN). i just wish people who don't know how to program with it would stop picking it up and getting things done. my company's 10-year old Perl webapps are still chugging along just fine, btw.
- chromatic 17y agoRuby 7, perhaps. Ruby would have to adopt a module import system, multidispatch, a better object system, generics, optional typing, macros, and something resembling grammars to come close to what you can use in Perl 6 right now.
- jrockway 17y agoJudging by the number of patches I get for my modules, I would say that this statement is false. Or everyone on the Internet is just really, really smart.