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Use the tools you like. It's nobody's place to tell you what tools to use, and the reverse of that is also true. For a lot of us, we want to develop scripts (a

Use the tools you like. It's nobody's place to tell you what tools to use, and the reverse of that is also true. For a lot of us, we want to develop scripts (and skills) that are portable across different environments. There are limited hours in a workday, and I get the most value out of learning (and using) tools that I can find on the servers / build-machines / workstations that I have to use every day. Those machines run Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky, and RHEL. Yes, it's a slow process to get new packages into mainstream distros. That's not a bad thing, because those packages have to be maintained for a very long time. Stability is a virtue here. There are some ecosystems (I'm looking at you, Javascript) where anything older than a year might as well be abandonware. It's great that there are some fast-moving areas in our industry, and also great that there are slow-moving areas. Don't make the mistake of assuming something is bad just because it's feature-complete. You might be surprised at how feature-rich something like Awk really is. If your argument boils down to "Awk and Bash are ugly and outdated", I'd encourage you to think more flexibly about the tools you choose. There's nothing wrong with learning the basics of a widespread tool that you are guaranteed to find anywhere.

recuter 4y ago
Perl is not bad because it is feature complete. Perl might even be good, except that it is dead. > if your argument boils down to "Awk and Bash are ugly and outdated" Not at all. However, Awk was written almost 50 years ago. The awk book is good and it is very true that the thing is installed most everywhere so if you're already invested in it and it does everything you want, keep using it of course. But it just might be possible to improve on a tool after half a century. I simply shared new tools, that if you like awk, might really be up your ally. They might not be packaged with your favorite package manger anytime soon but you can grab them with cargo - if that's not portable enough so be it. No harm no foul.

recuter 4y ago

Perl is not bad because it is feature complete. Perl might even be good, except that it is dead. > if your argument boils down to "Awk and Bash are ugly and outdated" Not at all. However, Awk was written almost 50 years ago. The awk book is good and it is very true that the thing is installed most everywhere so if you're already invested in it and it does everything you want, keep using it of course. But it just might be possible to improve on a tool after half a century. I simply shared new tools, that if you like awk, might really be up your ally. They might not be packaged with your favorite package manger anytime soon but you can grab them with cargo - if that's not portable enough so be it. No harm no foul.