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I hope somewhere in the future there will be a point where we can have discussions about things like this without having some people think they can just state "

by phaylon 15y ago

I hope somewhere in the future there will be a point where we can have discussions about things like this without having some people think they can just state "Perl is dead," "Python is the new Perl" or "Ruby is just better." It's fine if that's your opinion, more power to you. But that simply doesn't make it a fact. The question of the value of technology is a very complicated one. And we'll never be able to work out the good and bad points of the specific dynamic languages, to cooperate and learn from each other, if all discussion gets reduced to trying to make the others look worse. A witty saying never proved anything. At least nothing valuable. To me, in most cases the witty statements regarding languages (be it Perl 5/6, PHP, Java, or anything else) don't demonstrate insight or experience, but merely a lack of respect for other people's opinions. After all, "they" must recognize that every large enough PHP program is unmaintainable garbage, since "you" were able to recognize that. If they don't, they lack experience. If you can't even imagine that the other party might have a point, you're not trying to have a constructive discussion, but instead are in some kind of a fight for the prize of being right. The problem is, there is no prize. There is no right. Within this game, no-one wins. To sum up: Less emotion, less absolutism, more technology.

danssig 15y ago
Substitute COBOL for Perl in your post and read it again. Do you still agree?
- phaylon 15y ago
  Yes. I don't follow COBOL and can't judge it. If there is a modern COBOL, I certainly won't judge it by the COBOL that existed in the 90s. To throw the question back: Do you think Lisp is useless because it's old, or do you think the Lisp of the 80s doesn't have that much to do with the Lisp of 2011, even if the syntax didn't change that much?
  - danssig 15y ago
    I think Lisp is still mostly the same as it was in the 80's and even before. But Lisp was always incredibly powerful and still has ideas that haven't reach mainstream yet. Unlike Lisp and COBOL, Lisp still has a few more things to teach us.
    - phaylon 15y ago
      If that's your opinion then I hope you're happy with it. I can only tell you that I, my colleagues and many others find great use in Perl, find that it is also very powerful, and continue to further the community, the ecosystem and the core language in anyway we can or enjoy. It solves our problems and it solves them better and better each year. As I said above, it's about the value of the technology for you, your project and your team. I can't judge what's of value to you, or why something is of value to you. But you can't judge either why or what is valuable to me. We have reasons to use Perl that aren't pure stubbornness. Edit: Forgot about the Lisp part. I actually believe that in the world of Lisp/Scheme there were many things that changed for the better, and it was driven by developments such as Arc, Clojure, Racket, Guile and so on. There are people that think every Lisp is unmaintainable, slow, outdated, has no libraries, has no community, has an unsupporting community, and so on. And my point is that the answer is always more complicated than just "they are right" or "they are wrong."
cageface 15y ago
You don't need hard quantitative data to note the shift away from Perl to Ruby, Python and PHP. It's also not a purely emotional argument to note that Ruby and Python both cover roughly the same problem domain but with far fewer quirks. Ruby's tremendous surge of popularity was driven by a new generation of young, passionate developers. I don't see anybody advocating Perl that doesn't already have many years of sunk costs in the language.
- phaylon 15y ago
  > You don't need hard quantitative data If you make an absolute, quantitative statement, you kinda do. If you read what I said below, it's perfectly fine to feel that in your environment there is a shift happening, and I can't judge that. What I'm saying is that you can't extrapolate from that to everybody. And I'm also saying that my and many others opinions differ. All I'm asking for is the minimum respect to not basically call us liars or delusional by implying we just make this stuff up, or are too invested to see the truth. In my (limited) experience, it is more the anti-crowd that is usually quite invested. Not monetary though, but emotionally invested. Some people in here find it very important that the world hates the things they hate at least as much.

by phaylon 15y ago

danssig 15y ago

Substitute COBOL for Perl in your post and read it again. Do you still agree?

phaylon 15y ago
Yes. I don't follow COBOL and can't judge it. If there is a modern COBOL, I certainly won't judge it by the COBOL that existed in the 90s. To throw the question back: Do you think Lisp is useless because it's old, or do you think the Lisp of the 80s doesn't have that much to do with the Lisp of 2011, even if the syntax didn't change that much?
- danssig 15y ago
  I think Lisp is still mostly the same as it was in the 80's and even before. But Lisp was always incredibly powerful and still has ideas that haven't reach mainstream yet. Unlike Lisp and COBOL, Lisp still has a few more things to teach us.
  - phaylon 15y ago
    If that's your opinion then I hope you're happy with it. I can only tell you that I, my colleagues and many others find great use in Perl, find that it is also very powerful, and continue to further the community, the ecosystem and the core language in anyway we can or enjoy. It solves our problems and it solves them better and better each year. As I said above, it's about the value of the technology for you, your project and your team. I can't judge what's of value to you, or why something is of value to you. But you can't judge either why or what is valuable to me. We have reasons to use Perl that aren't pure stubbornness. Edit: Forgot about the Lisp part. I actually believe that in the world of Lisp/Scheme there were many things that changed for the better, and it was driven by developments such as Arc, Clojure, Racket, Guile and so on. There are people that think every Lisp is unmaintainable, slow, outdated, has no libraries, has no community, has an unsupporting community, and so on. And my point is that the answer is always more complicated than just "they are right" or "they are wrong."

cageface 15y ago

You don't need hard quantitative data to note the shift away from Perl to Ruby, Python and PHP. It's also not a purely emotional argument to note that Ruby and Python both cover roughly the same problem domain but with far fewer quirks. Ruby's tremendous surge of popularity was driven by a new generation of young, passionate developers. I don't see anybody advocating Perl that doesn't already have many years of sunk costs in the language.

phaylon 15y ago
> You don't need hard quantitative data If you make an absolute, quantitative statement, you kinda do. If you read what I said below, it's perfectly fine to feel that in your environment there is a shift happening, and I can't judge that. What I'm saying is that you can't extrapolate from that to everybody. And I'm also saying that my and many others opinions differ. All I'm asking for is the minimum respect to not basically call us liars or delusional by implying we just make this stuff up, or are too invested to see the truth. In my (limited) experience, it is more the anti-crowd that is usually quite invested. Not monetary though, but emotionally invested. Some people in here find it very important that the world hates the things they hate at least as much.