3 ms·

People love to 'hate on' Perl, but how many of them have actually used it? No one who remembers the 90s-00s (and how incredibly helpful Perl was, until those o

People love to 'hate on' Perl, but how many of them have actually used it? No one who remembers the 90s-00s (and how incredibly helpful Perl was, until those other languages at its lunch) has any "hate", as such for Perl. Even its staunchest critics (best as I recall) still had a strong baseline respect for what it was able to accomplish, and how it moved the craft as a whole forward. I disagree that it still makes for a good choice, for the simple overriding reason that (whatever one thinks of it) it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now. As such it's hard to think of a good argument for bringing it into your toolchain in a big way, absent some very good reason (like some specific tool or subsystem based on it). That said I don't mind your sticking up for it, and there's no reason you should be downvoted for doing so.

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
>> it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now. Perl 5 is a camel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl#/media/File%3AProgrammingPerl.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl#/media/File%3... It is a smelly, sturdy beast that requires minimal resources and can get you through the desert. OP asked: "What are the most interesting, alternatives for simple scripts." As you've stated, Perl 5 has served as an alternative to shell scripts for nearly 30 years. It may not be the best choice for every use case, but I have seen several questions on HN where people need an alternative to Bash and Python, but have no idea how easy the problem could be solved with a Perl one-liner. All too frequently Perl is dismissed by people who are ignorant of it because it is trendy to 'hate on' it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ihatepython 4y ago
> and there's no reason you should be downvoted for doing so. You are correct, but this is HN.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago

>> it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now. Perl 5 is a camel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl#/media/File%3AProgrammingPerl.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl#/media/File%3... It is a smelly, sturdy beast that requires minimal resources and can get you through the desert. OP asked: "What are the most interesting, alternatives for simple scripts." As you've stated, Perl 5 has served as an alternative to shell scripts for nearly 30 years. It may not be the best choice for every use case, but I have seen several questions on HN where people need an alternative to Bash and Python, but have no idea how easy the problem could be solved with a Perl one-liner. All too frequently Perl is dismissed by people who are ignorant of it because it is trendy to 'hate on' it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ihatepython 4y ago

> and there's no reason you should be downvoted for doing so. You are correct, but this is HN.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]