7 ms·

Python?

by toddh 16y ago

Python?

perlgeek 16y ago
I kinda thought the trolls were mostly on reddit, sad to see their rise on hackernews too.
- toddh 16y ago
  You see a troll, I see a lack of introspection on your part.
  - perlgeek 16y ago
    How much reflection do you spend on a single-word comment? Python is not Perl, how can it be Modern Perl? I know that some people think that Ruby and Python continued the tradition of scripting languages that Perl brought to mainstream, and that they are both modern in some sense, but that doesn't make them Modern Perl in any way. Would you care to expend the thoughts that you think my introspection should have produced, that let the reply not be troll?
    - toddh 16y ago
      What length of comment is required for you to begin introspection? This does a good enough job: http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/11/why-perl-lost-it.html http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/11/why-perl-lost-it.html. I personally look to lack of advancement of the language and lack of adoption for new ventures. Google adopted Python for GAE, for example. Heroku used Ruby for their PaaS product. When you look at new devops tools they aren't written in Perl. So, it's not a matter of what is better, it's more a matter of other scripting languages are now in the slot/brand/niche/mindshare where Perl once would have been. So in that sense they are the modern perl.
      - chromatic 16y ago
        When you look at new devops tools they aren't written in Perl. That statement seems to assume a zero-sum game and begs for non-anecdotal evidence. (Paul Graham wrote Hacker News in Arc instead of Ruby on Rails or Django; clearly they're losing ground too!)
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  If you interpret it as a joke, it is amusing. It's not that I don't like Perl. In fact, I use Perl and have NEVER used Python.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    It's missing the amusing part. Here's better trolling: The notion that everything is a stream of bytes is utterly braindead. The notion that regexps are the solution to all problems is equally braindead. Just like Perl. Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. (by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@netscape.com>)
chromatic 16y ago
What about Python do you find better than modern Perl? Besides Pygame and NLTK, there's nothing in Python I can't do faster, easier, or more maintainably in Perl. I much prefer Moose to Python's barely-there OO, and nothing compares to the availability (and testing and other infrastructure) of the CPAN.
- toddh 16y ago
  It's a joke pointing out how Perl has fallen behind in the marketplace. I've written as much Perl as your average bear, to see it lose out has been sad.
  - chromatic 16y ago
    By which objective measurements has Perl "fallen behind in the marketplace"? TIOBE is nonsense and noise, and the State of the Computer Book Marketplace has flaws that would make a first year business student blush. I know there's some nebulous buzz factor, but I'm asking about verifiable measurements.
    - phaylon 16y ago
      It might be worth noting that Perl is simply stronger than it appears. The community has very easy ways to communicate information, since Perl has a very good infrastructure. CPAN is easy and doesn't distinguish between rank or other privileges; there's RSS feeds for about everything and you can get a large crowd simply by releasing; Many forms of bugs that are dependent on architecture/environment can be caught by automated testing, or by community members reporting their installation logs through their CPAN client; We still use mailing lists (some of which are closed) because they're easy to manage and are well suited for long big-traffic discussions; we use IRC because of its advantages, and many early developments happen on irc.perl.org, separated from the rest of the IRC world (this isn't bad, just a simple reason); We didn't do forums and online communities that well in the past, but it's starting. There is PerlMonks, but it was always very Perl-specific. Blogging has been adopted by the community a lot, and you can feel its impact when you see more and more people asking about the projects the community enjoys the most at the time (Moose, Catalyst, Dist-Zilla & Co). I heard "Yea, we still make heavy use of Perl in our company, but we didn't follow the community, because isn't Perl on a decline?" many times at CeBit this year. So it's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Overcoming it isn't an easy task, but we're heading in the right direction and there's a couple of very smart people working on it.

Python?

by toddh 16y ago

Python?

perlgeek 16y ago

I kinda thought the trolls were mostly on reddit, sad to see their rise on hackernews too.

toddh 16y ago
You see a troll, I see a lack of introspection on your part.
- perlgeek 16y ago
  How much reflection do you spend on a single-word comment? Python is not Perl, how can it be Modern Perl? I know that some people think that Ruby and Python continued the tradition of scripting languages that Perl brought to mainstream, and that they are both modern in some sense, but that doesn't make them Modern Perl in any way. Would you care to expend the thoughts that you think my introspection should have produced, that let the reply not be troll?
  - toddh 16y ago
    What length of comment is required for you to begin introspection? This does a good enough job: http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/11/why-perl-lost-it.html http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/11/why-perl-lost-it.html. I personally look to lack of advancement of the language and lack of adoption for new ventures. Google adopted Python for GAE, for example. Heroku used Ruby for their PaaS product. When you look at new devops tools they aren't written in Perl. So, it's not a matter of what is better, it's more a matter of other scripting languages are now in the slot/brand/niche/mindshare where Perl once would have been. So in that sense they are the modern perl.
    - chromatic 16y ago
      When you look at new devops tools they aren't written in Perl. That statement seems to assume a zero-sum game and begs for non-anecdotal evidence. (Paul Graham wrote Hacker News in Arc instead of Ruby on Rails or Django; clearly they're losing ground too!)
sliverstorm 16y ago
If you interpret it as a joke, it is amusing. It's not that I don't like Perl. In fact, I use Perl and have NEVER used Python.
- bad_user 16y ago
  It's missing the amusing part. Here's better trolling: The notion that everything is a stream of bytes is utterly braindead. The notion that regexps are the solution to all problems is equally braindead. Just like Perl. Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. (by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@netscape.com>)

chromatic 16y ago

What about Python do you find better than modern Perl? Besides Pygame and NLTK, there's nothing in Python I can't do faster, easier, or more maintainably in Perl. I much prefer Moose to Python's barely-there OO, and nothing compares to the availability (and testing and other infrastructure) of the CPAN.

toddh 16y ago
It's a joke pointing out how Perl has fallen behind in the marketplace. I've written as much Perl as your average bear, to see it lose out has been sad.
- chromatic 16y ago
  By which objective measurements has Perl "fallen behind in the marketplace"? TIOBE is nonsense and noise, and the State of the Computer Book Marketplace has flaws that would make a first year business student blush. I know there's some nebulous buzz factor, but I'm asking about verifiable measurements.
  - phaylon 16y ago
    It might be worth noting that Perl is simply stronger than it appears. The community has very easy ways to communicate information, since Perl has a very good infrastructure. CPAN is easy and doesn't distinguish between rank or other privileges; there's RSS feeds for about everything and you can get a large crowd simply by releasing; Many forms of bugs that are dependent on architecture/environment can be caught by automated testing, or by community members reporting their installation logs through their CPAN client; We still use mailing lists (some of which are closed) because they're easy to manage and are well suited for long big-traffic discussions; we use IRC because of its advantages, and many early developments happen on irc.perl.org, separated from the rest of the IRC world (this isn't bad, just a simple reason); We didn't do forums and online communities that well in the past, but it's starting. There is PerlMonks, but it was always very Perl-specific. Blogging has been adopted by the community a lot, and you can feel its impact when you see more and more people asking about the projects the community enjoys the most at the time (Moose, Catalyst, Dist-Zilla & Co). I heard "Yea, we still make heavy use of Perl in our company, but we didn't follow the community, because isn't Perl on a decline?" many times at CeBit this year. So it's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Overcoming it isn't an easy task, but we're heading in the right direction and there's a couple of very smart people working on it.