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Every time I see something about Perl 6 I think this is awesome. Shame that a younger generation of programmers will never use it, because it’s not the new cool

by harryf 7y ago

Every time I see something about Perl 6 I think this is awesome. Shame that a younger generation of programmers will never use it, because it’s not the new cool. If they renamed Perl 6 into something cool like “Liquid” or some think you find in the kitchen, like Chilli. Then hide away it’s origins a bit, they’d have a language kids would be raving about. I know that’s not the point but I can’t think of any programmer I know today that doesn’t talk about Perl with a certain contempt. “It’s Perrrrl” eyes up

noir_lord 7y ago
If you want to make Perl 6 'cool' just create an alternate syntax that maps to Perl 6. cough Elixir cough
- dnautics 7y ago
  To be fair, elixir mostly inherited pattern matching case from erlang
Retra 7y ago
If you think merely rebranding something will make it more acceptable, then perhaps you've found the real reason people don't like Perl: it is a language that appears to be built around the superficial. Like someone who takes 30 mins crafting their bed hair in an effort to prove they don't care about appearances.
- microwavecamera 7y ago
  > then perhaps you've found the real reason people don't like Perl: it is a language that appears to be built around the superficial How so? That's an odd statement without citation or clarification. If anything the opposite is true. It's become a trend in the industry to let superficial attitudes shape popular opinion. You're not "cool" if you use languages like Perl and PHP. You're supposed to criticize Perl even if you never used it or even understand it. The idea that Perl 6 should be called something else isn't because of the superficiality of Perl but of popular misconceptions and misguided opinions erroneously excepted as truisms in the tech community. Perl 6 is not a the next "version" of Perl 5. It's a completely different language but because it's still called "Perl" people tend to dismiss it out of hand. That and it's confusing to call it "Perl 6" when it isn't related to Perl 5 and doesn't even share a codebase with Perl 5.
  - Retra 7y ago
    >It's become a trend in the industry to let superficial attitudes shape popular opinion. Well, yeah. Popular opinion is always a trend, and it always follows superficial attitudes. That's basically a tautology. The question is why do you care? Why complain about being unpopular if you don't want to follow trends? If Perl were popular, it would be just as trendy to praise it. And just as counter-trendy to denounce it as over-sold. People have perfectly rational reasons to use languages that are popular. If Perl is not popular, it has to offer something else. Is it as fast as C? As portable as JavaScript? As flexible as C++? As well-funded as Java? As easy to use as Python? These 'popular' languages are also heavily criticized. JavaScript could be the worst language in the world, and it would survive all that criticism because browser compatibility is important. What does Perl offer? Look at the landing page at https://www.perl.org/ https://www.perl.org/ "It's old and does stuff! That's why we love it!" Who cares about that? The language basically bills itself with no more than "This is a programming language, but with different syntax!"
- b2gills 7y ago
  It only appears superficial because you have only looked at the surface of it. Perl6 brings together features from many languages, but makes them feel as if they have always belonged together. Imagine writing Haskell and C code in the same line. If Perl6 had just copied the syntax of the originators of those features verbatim, it would feel very disjointed. It instead feels very natural and fluid. gather loop ( my Int $i = 0 ; ; $i += 2 ) { take $i } The above line is a generator for an infinite sequence of even numbers, but uses the C-style `for` loop to do it. --- When major features get brought into Perl6 they are rarely copied exactly. That applies both to the syntax and the functionality of the feature. If the feature doesn't compose with other language features, or doesn't mesh syntactically, it will be redesigned until it does. (We don't want non-Perl6-ish features.) When I was new to Perl6 I would often try to combine features together to try and break the syntax/compiler/runtime. Eventually I got tired of that because it almost always worked the first time exactly how I would expect it to. (A wizard will eventually see magical things as being mundane because he sees them day-in and day-out.)
jacoblambda 7y ago
I can say as a part of the younger generation of programmers that I don't have any problem with Perl and that it has its uses but I don't think Perl should necessarily be used as much as it was in the past.
Sharlin 7y ago
There's a concept in programming language design called "weirdness budget". There's only a finite amount of idiosyncratic syntax and semantics your language is allowed to have before it starts to turn off potential adapters because it looks too unfamiliar, too unintuitive, or too opinionated compared to what they already know. Perl has never cared what the mainstream programmer community thinks. It is willfully and deliberately weird; when it adopts or reinvents concepts from other languages it does it in a way that seems purposively quirky; it invents bespoke vocabulary for things that already have well-established names. The Perl community appears cultish, lacking a certain self-awareness and cognizance of the programming world at large. It's like an alternate timeline where everything seems eerily off in some way. Perl blew its weirdness budget a long time ago and never cared. And given its well-deserved reputation as a write-only language, it's no wonder at all that people don't take it entirely seriously.
- ryl00 7y ago
  I don't think this is correct. If you come from Unix programming, perl should not at all be unfamiliar. It was an intentional amalgamation of shell, sed, awk, etc. And there was a time when that was the "mainstream" programmer community.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    I think the key word is "was". Yes, in the beginning it was a pretty straightforward amalgamation of a bunch of standard Unix tools. (Although it should be noted that those were even then in a separate category from languages meant for application programming!) But that's where the Perl timeline started to diverge from the mainstream, in which production-ready programming languages have mostly grown to agree on basic concepts and terminology, and to emphasize design principles like clarity over cleverness and readability over writability.
- nathancahill 7y ago
  Not sure if I agree. Ruby is a language founded on quirkyness and bespoke vocabulary. They've certainly blown their "weirdness budget" too, but it has a large following.

by harryf 7y ago

noir_lord 7y ago

If you want to make Perl 6 'cool' just create an alternate syntax that maps to Perl 6. cough Elixir cough

dnautics 7y ago
To be fair, elixir mostly inherited pattern matching case from erlang

Retra 7y ago

If you think merely rebranding something will make it more acceptable, then perhaps you've found the real reason people don't like Perl: it is a language that appears to be built around the superficial. Like someone who takes 30 mins crafting their bed hair in an effort to prove they don't care about appearances.

microwavecamera 7y ago
> then perhaps you've found the real reason people don't like Perl: it is a language that appears to be built around the superficial How so? That's an odd statement without citation or clarification. If anything the opposite is true. It's become a trend in the industry to let superficial attitudes shape popular opinion. You're not "cool" if you use languages like Perl and PHP. You're supposed to criticize Perl even if you never used it or even understand it. The idea that Perl 6 should be called something else isn't because of the superficiality of Perl but of popular misconceptions and misguided opinions erroneously excepted as truisms in the tech community. Perl 6 is not a the next "version" of Perl 5. It's a completely different language but because it's still called "Perl" people tend to dismiss it out of hand. That and it's confusing to call it "Perl 6" when it isn't related to Perl 5 and doesn't even share a codebase with Perl 5.
- Retra 7y ago
  >It's become a trend in the industry to let superficial attitudes shape popular opinion. Well, yeah. Popular opinion is always a trend, and it always follows superficial attitudes. That's basically a tautology. The question is why do you care? Why complain about being unpopular if you don't want to follow trends? If Perl were popular, it would be just as trendy to praise it. And just as counter-trendy to denounce it as over-sold. People have perfectly rational reasons to use languages that are popular. If Perl is not popular, it has to offer something else. Is it as fast as C? As portable as JavaScript? As flexible as C++? As well-funded as Java? As easy to use as Python? These 'popular' languages are also heavily criticized. JavaScript could be the worst language in the world, and it would survive all that criticism because browser compatibility is important. What does Perl offer? Look at the landing page at https://www.perl.org/ https://www.perl.org/ "It's old and does stuff! That's why we love it!" Who cares about that? The language basically bills itself with no more than "This is a programming language, but with different syntax!"
b2gills 7y ago
It only appears superficial because you have only looked at the surface of it. Perl6 brings together features from many languages, but makes them feel as if they have always belonged together. Imagine writing Haskell and C code in the same line. If Perl6 had just copied the syntax of the originators of those features verbatim, it would feel very disjointed. It instead feels very natural and fluid. gather loop ( my Int $i = 0 ; ; $i += 2 ) { take $i } The above line is a generator for an infinite sequence of even numbers, but uses the C-style `for` loop to do it. --- When major features get brought into Perl6 they are rarely copied exactly. That applies both to the syntax and the functionality of the feature. If the feature doesn't compose with other language features, or doesn't mesh syntactically, it will be redesigned until it does. (We don't want non-Perl6-ish features.) When I was new to Perl6 I would often try to combine features together to try and break the syntax/compiler/runtime. Eventually I got tired of that because it almost always worked the first time exactly how I would expect it to. (A wizard will eventually see magical things as being mundane because he sees them day-in and day-out.)

jacoblambda 7y ago

I can say as a part of the younger generation of programmers that I don't have any problem with Perl and that it has its uses but I don't think Perl should necessarily be used as much as it was in the past.

Sharlin 7y ago

There's a concept in programming language design called "weirdness budget". There's only a finite amount of idiosyncratic syntax and semantics your language is allowed to have before it starts to turn off potential adapters because it looks too unfamiliar, too unintuitive, or too opinionated compared to what they already know. Perl has never cared what the mainstream programmer community thinks. It is willfully and deliberately weird; when it adopts or reinvents concepts from other languages it does it in a way that seems purposively quirky; it invents bespoke vocabulary for things that already have well-established names. The Perl community appears cultish, lacking a certain self-awareness and cognizance of the programming world at large. It's like an alternate timeline where everything seems eerily off in some way. Perl blew its weirdness budget a long time ago and never cared. And given its well-deserved reputation as a write-only language, it's no wonder at all that people don't take it entirely seriously.

ryl00 7y ago
I don't think this is correct. If you come from Unix programming, perl should not at all be unfamiliar. It was an intentional amalgamation of shell, sed, awk, etc. And there was a time when that was the "mainstream" programmer community.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  I think the key word is "was". Yes, in the beginning it was a pretty straightforward amalgamation of a bunch of standard Unix tools. (Although it should be noted that those were even then in a separate category from languages meant for application programming!) But that's where the Perl timeline started to diverge from the mainstream, in which production-ready programming languages have mostly grown to agree on basic concepts and terminology, and to emphasize design principles like clarity over cleverness and readability over writability.
nathancahill 7y ago
Not sure if I agree. Ruby is a language founded on quirkyness and bespoke vocabulary. They've certainly blown their "weirdness budget" too, but it has a large following.