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I believe the Ruby community is very pro-Perl. I enjoyed Perl myself and Ruby seems to have a lot of the same soul to it. I usually say Ruby is everything I l

I believe the Ruby community is very pro-Perl. I enjoyed Perl myself and Ruby seems to have a lot of the same soul to it. I usually say Ruby is everything I loved about Perl with none of what I disliked/hated.

sabat 16y ago
I'm an old Perl hacker but do most of my work in Ruby these days -- and love it. I'll always have a soft spot for Perl, and will never forget how it helped build the Internet. But to me, Ruby makes Perl look like Java.
- rbrcurtis 16y ago
  Can you explain the "makes perl look like java" comment? how does perl look like java?
  - sabat 16y ago
    I'm kind of kidding, but Ruby lets you do things more elegantly than you can in Perl, and with less verbosity (hence the Java comment). It's really a syntax issue that I'm talking about, but it matters a lot for readability and language usability. Perl: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; # sort them into an array my @y = sort split(' ', $x); # do we have more than 2 elements? (just a random test) if (scalar(@y) > 2) { print "we've got ", scalar(@y), " elements!\n"; } else { print "insufficient elements. fail.\n"; } Ruby: x = 'Apple Carrot Banana' y = x.split(' ').sort if (y.size > 2) puts "we've got #{y.size} elements!" else puts 'insufficient elements. fail.' end Ruby just seems more elegant to me, more programmer-friendly. YMMV.
    - chromatic 16y ago
      A modern Perl programmer might write something much more elegant: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = $x->split(' ')->sort; if (@y > 2) { say "we've got ${\@y->size} elements!"; } else { say "insufficient elements. fail."; }
      - perigrin 16y ago
        And one that doesn't like autobox would say: use 5.12.2; # enables modern features my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = sort split ' ', $x; say @y > 2 ? "we've got ${\scalar @y} elements!" : 'insufficient elements. fail.'; Not everything needs to be an Object. Not every call needs to be a method call. Some people think better with procedures, some people think better with objects. One of the reasons I personally like Perl is I can use which ever one is appropriate to the problem domain. Edit: forgot the `sort` call.
      - colomon 16y ago
        Or ever-so-slightly lighter Perl 6 version: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = $x.words.sort; if @y > 2 { say "we've got {@y.elems} elements!"; } else { say "insufficient elements. fail."; }
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        hyperbovine 16y ago
        Ironic that the final rebuttal to "Perl looks like Java" is method chaining using periods :-) But hey, that looks very nice--glad to see Perl finally "got the dots." It's been years since I used Perl, mainly because I was squarely in the mindset of the OP. I'll have to give 6 a look.

sabat 16y ago

I'm an old Perl hacker but do most of my work in Ruby these days -- and love it. I'll always have a soft spot for Perl, and will never forget how it helped build the Internet. But to me, Ruby makes Perl look like Java.

rbrcurtis 16y ago
Can you explain the "makes perl look like java" comment? how does perl look like java?
- sabat 16y ago
  I'm kind of kidding, but Ruby lets you do things more elegantly than you can in Perl, and with less verbosity (hence the Java comment). It's really a syntax issue that I'm talking about, but it matters a lot for readability and language usability. Perl: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; # sort them into an array my @y = sort split(' ', $x); # do we have more than 2 elements? (just a random test) if (scalar(@y) > 2) { print "we've got ", scalar(@y), " elements!\n"; } else { print "insufficient elements. fail.\n"; } Ruby: x = 'Apple Carrot Banana' y = x.split(' ').sort if (y.size > 2) puts "we've got #{y.size} elements!" else puts 'insufficient elements. fail.' end Ruby just seems more elegant to me, more programmer-friendly. YMMV.
  - chromatic 16y ago
    A modern Perl programmer might write something much more elegant: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = $x->split(' ')->sort; if (@y > 2) { say "we've got ${\@y->size} elements!"; } else { say "insufficient elements. fail."; }
    - perigrin 16y ago
      And one that doesn't like autobox would say: use 5.12.2; # enables modern features my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = sort split ' ', $x; say @y > 2 ? "we've got ${\scalar @y} elements!" : 'insufficient elements. fail.'; Not everything needs to be an Object. Not every call needs to be a method call. Some people think better with procedures, some people think better with objects. One of the reasons I personally like Perl is I can use which ever one is appropriate to the problem domain. Edit: forgot the `sort` call.
    - colomon 16y ago
      Or ever-so-slightly lighter Perl 6 version: my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'; my @y = $x.words.sort; if @y > 2 { say "we've got {@y.elems} elements!"; } else { say "insufficient elements. fail."; }
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - hyperbovine 16y ago
        Ironic that the final rebuttal to "Perl looks like Java" is method chaining using periods :-) But hey, that looks very nice--glad to see Perl finally "got the dots." It's been years since I used Perl, mainly because I was squarely in the mindset of the OP. I'll have to give 6 a look.