8 ms·

I think emacs did see a similar resurgance, for the same reason that vim has. We just each tend to notice different resurgances depending on which editor we use

I think emacs did see a similar resurgance, for the same reason that vim has. We just each tend to notice different resurgances depending on which editor we use... And here's some constructive criticism for the aspiring Perl advocate: Stop talking in acronyms and obscure library names. What the hell is Moose and what real world problem does it solve significantly better than the popular alternatives? Same for CPAN, frankly. Most people younger than me don't get it when you name-check CPAN. What does that stand for?Give me a killer app for CPAN, preferably one that people care about. Note that the parent post speaks in use cases: Ruby is for problem X, Erlang is for problem Y, JavaScript is for problem Z. What is Perl for, and why won't Ruby work just as well?

pwpwp 16y ago
emacs? Stop talking in acronyms and obscure names. Same for vim, frankly. Most people younger than me don't get it when you name-check vim. What does that stand for? :P
- evilduck 16y ago
  The differences I see here are that a) emacs vs. vim has been a holy war that has gone on since both were conceived and is a debate which is often older than the programmers discussing it. To be ignorant of recent language developments or internal acronyms is excusable, to be ignorant of vim/emacs is less so. b) emacs and vim are not specific to any one language. Dropping acronyms that are non-specific to the topic (perl vs ruby, python, whatever) doesn't have some domain specific knowledge attached to it. If you're on either side of the debate, vim can be equally familiar or obscure.
  - pwpwp 16y ago
    Terminology has context. Complaining about an article on perl.org not mentioning what CPAN is, is like complaining about an article on cars.com not mentioning what BMW is.
  - nuxi 16y ago
    Regarding a) - that was emacs vs. vi, not vim. vim was first released in 1991.
jsrn 16y ago
> And here's some constructive criticism for the aspiring Perl advocate point taken, thanks. Perhaps the Perl success stories should be mentioned more often, too: Want to launch a one-man search engine? Perl makes the easy things easy and the hard things possible: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-architecture.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-arc... Amazon.com, del.icio.us, Craigslist, the BBC? All have significant parts written in Perl: http://www.fischerlaender.net/perl/perl-used-for-web-development http://www.fischerlaender.net/perl/perl-used-for-web-develop... http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/bbc.html http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/bbc.html
fendale 16y ago
For me, I use Ruby for everything I used to use Perl for, unless I can't get ruby on the system (still haven't managed a successful compile on HPUX!). The other use case is that Perl has a library Ruby does not, which still happens now and then.
Su-Shee 16y ago
Well.... How about Django, Evently, Moustache, CLOS, Hackage, Sinatra, Merb, OMQ as acronyms? ;) (None of it Perl..) Anyways. CPAN _is_ the killer app. It's a HUGE, extremely easy to install module/library archive. Perl's modules aren't spread around everywhere but neatly and nicely collected there and you just do a "cpan Foobar" and get Foobar with all possible dependencies included. Which is something what many languages (some still don't) have these days one way or another but really nothing compared to CPAN in number, service, search, testing facility and so on. You plainly _never_ have to bother searching your ass off to find some library you might need. Moose is Perl's OO system - as with JavaScript you can do different OO styles with Perl and Moose is a framework to do a role/trait based (please see Smalltalk for details or Perl 6's spec) OO with a heavy twist on metaprogramming. Perl is for writing things like Amazon or the IMDB and keep it running for 12 years in a row or for creating Nagios and SpamAssassin to watch over half of the Internet. Thanks to Perl, everybody can easily imagine what push, pop, shift, unshift on Arrays/Lists does and thanks to Perl everybody has very shiny Regex these days. That's why Vim has a magic/nomagic flag and what the P in PCRE stands for. The Ruby world gladly thanks Perl's DBI after which it modeled its own database interface. That's what Perl is about. Sharing shiny features and establishing a culture of "getting things done who run really fast".
- swombat 16y ago
  Anyways. CPAN _is_ the killer app. It's a HUGE, extremely easy to install module/library archive. Perl's modules aren't spread around everywhere but neatly and nicely collected there and you just do a "cpan Foobar" and get Foobar with all possible dependencies included. Sounds like Ruby's Gems: http://rubygems.org/ http://rubygems.org/ or even python's PyPi: http://pypi.python.org/pypi http://pypi.python.org/pypi ...
  - Su-Shee 16y ago
    Err.. yeah - what do you think after whom gems etc. are modeled? :) Haskell's system is called "hackage" for example and "R" has its "CRAN" and so on. Though it's really no fair comparison as CPAN contains what.. 89033 modules? http://search.cpan.org/ http://search.cpan.org/

pwpwp 16y ago

emacs? Stop talking in acronyms and obscure names. Same for vim, frankly. Most people younger than me don't get it when you name-check vim. What does that stand for? :P

evilduck 16y ago
The differences I see here are that a) emacs vs. vim has been a holy war that has gone on since both were conceived and is a debate which is often older than the programmers discussing it. To be ignorant of recent language developments or internal acronyms is excusable, to be ignorant of vim/emacs is less so. b) emacs and vim are not specific to any one language. Dropping acronyms that are non-specific to the topic (perl vs ruby, python, whatever) doesn't have some domain specific knowledge attached to it. If you're on either side of the debate, vim can be equally familiar or obscure.
- pwpwp 16y ago
  Terminology has context. Complaining about an article on perl.org not mentioning what CPAN is, is like complaining about an article on cars.com not mentioning what BMW is.
- nuxi 16y ago
  Regarding a) - that was emacs vs. vi, not vim. vim was first released in 1991.

jsrn 16y ago

> And here's some constructive criticism for the aspiring Perl advocate point taken, thanks. Perhaps the Perl success stories should be mentioned more often, too: Want to launch a one-man search engine? Perl makes the easy things easy and the hard things possible: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-architecture.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-arc... Amazon.com, del.icio.us, Craigslist, the BBC? All have significant parts written in Perl: http://www.fischerlaender.net/perl/perl-used-for-web-development http://www.fischerlaender.net/perl/perl-used-for-web-develop... http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/bbc.html http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/bbc.html

fendale 16y ago

For me, I use Ruby for everything I used to use Perl for, unless I can't get ruby on the system (still haven't managed a successful compile on HPUX!). The other use case is that Perl has a library Ruby does not, which still happens now and then.

Su-Shee 16y ago

Well.... How about Django, Evently, Moustache, CLOS, Hackage, Sinatra, Merb, OMQ as acronyms? ;) (None of it Perl..) Anyways. CPAN _is_ the killer app. It's a HUGE, extremely easy to install module/library archive. Perl's modules aren't spread around everywhere but neatly and nicely collected there and you just do a "cpan Foobar" and get Foobar with all possible dependencies included. Which is something what many languages (some still don't) have these days one way or another but really nothing compared to CPAN in number, service, search, testing facility and so on. You plainly _never_ have to bother searching your ass off to find some library you might need. Moose is Perl's OO system - as with JavaScript you can do different OO styles with Perl and Moose is a framework to do a role/trait based (please see Smalltalk for details or Perl 6's spec) OO with a heavy twist on metaprogramming. Perl is for writing things like Amazon or the IMDB and keep it running for 12 years in a row or for creating Nagios and SpamAssassin to watch over half of the Internet. Thanks to Perl, everybody can easily imagine what push, pop, shift, unshift on Arrays/Lists does and thanks to Perl everybody has very shiny Regex these days. That's why Vim has a magic/nomagic flag and what the P in PCRE stands for. The Ruby world gladly thanks Perl's DBI after which it modeled its own database interface. That's what Perl is about. Sharing shiny features and establishing a culture of "getting things done who run really fast".

swombat 16y ago
Anyways. CPAN _is_ the killer app. It's a HUGE, extremely easy to install module/library archive. Perl's modules aren't spread around everywhere but neatly and nicely collected there and you just do a "cpan Foobar" and get Foobar with all possible dependencies included. Sounds like Ruby's Gems: http://rubygems.org/ http://rubygems.org/ or even python's PyPi: http://pypi.python.org/pypi http://pypi.python.org/pypi ...
- Su-Shee 16y ago
  Err.. yeah - what do you think after whom gems etc. are modeled? :) Haskell's system is called "hackage" for example and "R" has its "CRAN" and so on. Though it's really no fair comparison as CPAN contains what.. 89033 modules? http://search.cpan.org/ http://search.cpan.org/