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They do make several points farther down the page about Perl specifically, including: "Perl is remarkably good for slicing, dicing, twisting, wringing, smoothi
by tyingq 5y ago
They do make several points farther down the page about Perl specifically, including:
"Perl is remarkably good for slicing, dicing, twisting, wringing, smoothing, summarizing and otherwise mangling text. Although the biological sciences do involve a good deal of numeric analysis now, most of the primary data is still text."
Which seems fair. Perl is very good at that sort of thing.
- micro_cam 5y agoPerl was the tool for the job at the time no doubt. But the streaming pattern still applies no matter what language you use and really should be emphasized. (I worked in bio as we were moving away from Perl)
- mst 5y agoThing is, for simple to medium complexity streaming stuff the sed -> awk -> perl progression is still entirely valid. I don't honestly think it's a bad thing on the science side that python's won for -programs- simply because maintainable perl at scale requires focus and discipline that is frankly energy the average scientist would be far better of expending elsewhere, but even if it's only really in commercial settings where large scale perl is still worthwhile it definitely still has its place in pipelines.