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Perl is a weird language language for you to cite when we're talking about languages that do major transitions well. Perl 6 was created because Perl 5 was an ev

by kbd 9y ago

Perl is a weird language language for you to cite when we're talking about languages that do major transitions well. Perl 6 was created because Perl 5 was an evolutionary dead end, took 15 years, has no adoption, and Perl 5 usage shrunk tremendously in the meantime. Not saying this glibly as I love Perl and I hope Perl 6 sees some adoption, but come on now. Also remember that Perl 5 itself was nearly a complete rewrite from 4.

crusso 9y ago
Exactly my thought regarding the need to evolve as a language. Perl is mostly dead because it didn't keep up with the times and I say that as a person who spent a tremendous amount of time learning and using Perl. The Schwartzarian transform was a beautiful thing to behold.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > The Schwartzarian transform was a beautiful thing to behold. Meh, more like a clutch for systems where you couldn't install List::UtilsBy. (One of my favorite Perl modules of all time.)
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    There's 17 years between the introduction of the Schwartzian Transform (1994) and List::UtilsBy (2011 according to CPAN).
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Huh. I guess it's one of those cases where once you have a thing, you wonder how you could have gone 20 years without it. :) Although, to be fair, I only started working with Perl (beyond one-liners on the shell) in 2012.
- reacweb 9y ago
  Perl is born to solve portability and limitation problems of shells (csh, sh, ksh*), awk and sed. People who do not live on the command line can not appreciate the power of perl.
bandrami 9y ago
There's also no push, whatsoever, to "get with the parrot program". Larry Wall is not holding a gun to Perl 5's head.
- kbd 9y ago
  Unlike Python 3's relation to Python 2, Perl 6 is genuinely a new language. It would make little sense for the community to discontinue Perl 5 and push for Perl 6. In retrospect it probably would have been better for the community if they'd given Perl 6 a new name.

by kbd 9y ago

crusso 9y ago

Exactly my thought regarding the need to evolve as a language. Perl is mostly dead because it didn't keep up with the times and I say that as a person who spent a tremendous amount of time learning and using Perl. The Schwartzarian transform was a beautiful thing to behold.

majewsky 9y ago
> The Schwartzarian transform was a beautiful thing to behold. Meh, more like a clutch for systems where you couldn't install List::UtilsBy. (One of my favorite Perl modules of all time.)
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  There's 17 years between the introduction of the Schwartzian Transform (1994) and List::UtilsBy (2011 according to CPAN).
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Huh. I guess it's one of those cases where once you have a thing, you wonder how you could have gone 20 years without it. :) Although, to be fair, I only started working with Perl (beyond one-liners on the shell) in 2012.
reacweb 9y ago
Perl is born to solve portability and limitation problems of shells (csh, sh, ksh*), awk and sed. People who do not live on the command line can not appreciate the power of perl.

bandrami 9y ago

There's also no push, whatsoever, to "get with the parrot program". Larry Wall is not holding a gun to Perl 5's head.

kbd 9y ago
Unlike Python 3's relation to Python 2, Perl 6 is genuinely a new language. It would make little sense for the community to discontinue Perl 5 and push for Perl 6. In retrospect it probably would have been better for the community if they'd given Perl 6 a new name.