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The poem posted with the announcement is below. Come join us on the mountain top. -- I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay dow

The poem posted with the announcement is below. Come join us on the mountain top. -- I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. 'Lie down, lie down!' the people cried. 'The great machine is history!' My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so. Howard W. Campbell, Jr. "Reflections on Not Participating in Current Events"

rudiger 16y ago
But isn't Perl the one we all left behind?
- prog 16y ago
  I wouldn't say that. Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features. One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)). As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html [2] http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html [3] http://perlcabal.org/syn/ http://perlcabal.org/syn/

rudiger 16y ago

But isn't Perl the one we all left behind?

prog 16y ago
I wouldn't say that. Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features. One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)). As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html [2] http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html [3] http://perlcabal.org/syn/ http://perlcabal.org/syn/