12 ms·

Perl 5 Is Dying

39 points by zvikara 18y ago

sabat 18y ago
And perl6 was DOA. Long live Ruby.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  Last I checked there are two different Perl 6 implementations on the home stretch.
  - kragen 18y ago
    That race was over four years ago, though. Ruby won. It's nice that the old nag is finally making it to the finish line, but the audience has been gone for a long time.
    - sabat 18y ago
      Precisely my point.
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      Actually, I don't know a lot of Perl developers who have switched to Ruby (though many have tried it--it is, after all, a very comfortable fit for Perl programmers, since it borrowed a lot of the best features of Perl). I know several PHP guys who made the switch...but, there are numerous areas where Ruby shows its immaturity and Perl is far more competent: Unicode, block scope, VM performance, concurrency, library breadth and depth, just to name a few. I like Ruby and think it's a very fine language. I've implemented a couple of small projects in Ruby, and had fun with it. I find it as readable and writable as any language I've used. But, I'm confident I could accomplish almost any task I would ever need to accomplish faster in Perl, and the result would run faster, smaller, and more reliably. The same is true of Python, though to a lesser degree (though some of the problem features in Python are more uncomfortable for me...closures, in particular), but at least it has some Unicode support built in (or bolted on with reasonable competence), and the VM tends to be closer to the speed of Perl than Ruby.
      - petercooper 18y ago
        Ruby has had some Unicode support for years. As of 1.9, it supports Unicode directly.
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        I wasn't aware Ruby 1.9 existed. I thought the current Ruby version was 1.8.mumble. Python 3.0 did just spring into existence while we were having this discussion, and it finally has proper Unicode support. So, there's one less reason to choose Perl over Python. If Ruby has Unicode support in 1.9, and 1.9 were widely available, then I guess that'd be true of Ruby as well. But, I just went to the Ruby website and it looks like 1.8.7 is the Ruby version available. It doesn't have Unicode support, does it?
        petercooper 18y ago
        Strictly, strictly, strictly speaking, you're right: 1.8.7 is the current "production" version of Ruby. However, Ruby 1.9 has been around for about a year now (considered a "development" release) but Ruby 1.9.1 will become the "production" version of Ruby when it's released in the next month (yeah, I know that makes no sense). The current preview releases are pretty spot on though - so we're in a transitional phase. Ruby 1.9's performance is also somewhat better than that of 1.8. On the 1.8 front, Ruby 1.8 has had what's called KCODE for years now, which enables Unicode support for various bits and pieces (primarily regular expressions). More info on this here: http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_and_jcode_library http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_...
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        If we're not strictly speaking about stable, widely available versions, how about we talk about how awesome Perl 6 is? Because it really is astonishingly, mind-bendingly awesome. Granted, the leading Perl 6 implementation is still a little over a year away (though Parrot hits 1.0 in March, which is a pretty cool milestone in and of itself), and I imagine Ruby 1.9 will be widely available long before then.
schtog 18y ago
Good. Let Python take over the dynamic scripting language space completely.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- d0mine 18y ago
  Let us not jump to conclusions: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+ruby,+php&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+rub... http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKILL/PYTHON.d/stats.20081202.1428.png http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKIL...
  - icey 18y ago
    Removing Java and C from your list makes it much easier to see what's going on: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby%2C+php&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby%2C+...
    - patio11 18y ago
      Right. Now view the same stats in Relative (which makes the trending more visible): http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,+perl,+ruby,+php&l=&relative=1 http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,+perl,+ruby,+php&#3... The numbers say what most people know: that set of four languages contains 1 that is mature and 3 that are growing. One of them is growing fairly rapidly relative to where it was when the data set started out.
      - mattmaroon 18y ago
        You wouldn't consider PHP mature?
        icey 18y ago
        Or Python, for that matter... I mean, it's 17 years old. It can drive a car and almost vote!
petercooper 18y ago
Some utterly ridiculous FUD about Ruby in there. I can't make Java scale.. but that's not because it can't - just because I don't know Java well at all. If you're not already good at something, of course it's easy to say something else doesn't work or isn't any good.
- scw 18y ago
  Flatly claiming that Rails can't scale is overstating the case, but their is some truth to it: relative to other frameworks / languages, the effort required to scale Rails is greater than other popular languages. This has improved with mongrel_cluster and (more recently) Passenger, but the memory footprint for a Rails application continues to be an issue, even relative to other dynamic languages.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    I'm intrigued.. do the efforts to scale Ruby and Perl differ significantly beyond their respective base-line performance? Interpreter level threads and multi-process based techniques have tended to be common approaches in both various Perl and Ruby projects I've worked with.
- staunch 18y ago
  It seems like each language only gets to have a one-liner description in everyone's head. Ruby is "can't scale". Perl is "line noise". Python is "clean, but boring" (or something), Java is "verbose and corporate", C++ is "overly complex", Lisp is "for kooks", etc, etc...
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    In other words, the way programming languages are marketed matters.
    - michaelneale 18y ago
      And fashion, lets not forget the fashion. What's this seasons colour?
staunch 18y ago
I still use Perl to this day because of Catalyst + DBIx::Class + CPAN. I can feel like I can do basically any web development task at least as elegantly, cleanly, and quickly as I could with Ruby or Python. Because of CPAN I think Perl probably wins more often than not on the speed aspect. I also tend to have a lot of backend stuff that runs as daemons/cronjobs, etc. Perl is really great for that stuff. Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in. But they're just passing by each other headed the opposite direction right now. The stigma Perl has just makes it seem worse than it is objectively. Today Perl 5 is still a very reasonable choice IMHO. I'll switch to Ruby or Python full-time at some point. If Perl 6 ends up being better at some point I'll switch to that. We used to have to choose between C++ and Java and Perl. Perl was so much nicer. Now we have to choose between three languages that are all heaven by comparison. I don't really care which "wins" because I will no matter what.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  > Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in Tossing aside this obviously flawed TIOBE thingy (Delphi, wtf?) I see no evidence of this. CPAN contributions are accelerating, not flat-lining. Perl's domination over Python and Ruby in the corporate environment continues.
  - staunch 18y ago
    I think you have to be deluding yourself to not recognize this as true. Of course Perl is very far from dead, but the early adopters and influential people are moving away. Don't forget that C++/Java had the corporate environments back when Perl kicked their asses.
    - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
      All you seem to be saying is you FEEL Perl is losing some sort of race. I don't share that feeling and I don't see any hard evidence of it. By all reasonable metrics perl continues to grow.
Tichy 18y ago
I can't take an article serious that lists Visual Basic and Delphi among the top ten programming languages. Maybe they are still very common, but even if they really are, they are definitely not common in the "world" that I am interested in.
- ars 18y ago
  So if the data doesn't match your expectations change it?
  - Tichy 18y ago
    No, I am just saying that this data lumps totally unrelated fields together. I would guess that VB is maybe used by Excel users who write little scriplets for their Excel sheets, but rarely by programmers. It is like saying "PCs and cars are the most popular products in the world", since I am not interested in cars, I simply don't care. I only care about the popularity of PCs. The data is correct, but it is irrelevant to me.
    - ars 18y ago
      You're wrong though. VB is used for many desktop applications, not just "excel scripts". But it seems that you don't want to change your beliefs even in the face of evidence. Sure, it's always possible to set up the selection criteria ("only language used by companies I like") such that the answer will be what you expect - but how is that valuable?
      - Tichy 18y ago
        Still, is VB really competing with Perl?
        ars 18y ago
        If you define competing as "what language should I used for this app" then no. VB is way better then perl for desktop apps, and perl way better than VB for text processing and web apps. But if you define competing as "what language should I learn in order to get a job" then yes, they are competing. PS: I know, and have used, both in different jobs, so it's not really competition because you can do both. But if you are only going to learn one, then yes, they are competing.
jodrellblank 18y ago
If you have to "reinvent the language and the community", how does that count as Perl 5 surviving?
greyman 18y ago
I agree with one redditor who blames perl6 for this state. Indeed, who would start a new project in perl5, when the language becomes obsolete by perl6, but on the other side, you have to wait and wait again for perl6 to be actually delivered. I think they had to either deliver perl6 a few years ago, or not doing it at all and continue to improve perl5. But in this situation, many people are just not willing to invest into perl and are looking for the greener pastures.

Perl 5 Is Dying

39 points by zvikara 18y ago

sabat 18y ago

And perl6 was DOA. Long live Ruby.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
Last I checked there are two different Perl 6 implementations on the home stretch.
- kragen 18y ago
  That race was over four years ago, though. Ruby won. It's nice that the old nag is finally making it to the finish line, but the audience has been gone for a long time.
  - sabat 18y ago
    Precisely my point.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Actually, I don't know a lot of Perl developers who have switched to Ruby (though many have tried it--it is, after all, a very comfortable fit for Perl programmers, since it borrowed a lot of the best features of Perl). I know several PHP guys who made the switch...but, there are numerous areas where Ruby shows its immaturity and Perl is far more competent: Unicode, block scope, VM performance, concurrency, library breadth and depth, just to name a few. I like Ruby and think it's a very fine language. I've implemented a couple of small projects in Ruby, and had fun with it. I find it as readable and writable as any language I've used. But, I'm confident I could accomplish almost any task I would ever need to accomplish faster in Perl, and the result would run faster, smaller, and more reliably. The same is true of Python, though to a lesser degree (though some of the problem features in Python are more uncomfortable for me...closures, in particular), but at least it has some Unicode support built in (or bolted on with reasonable competence), and the VM tends to be closer to the speed of Perl than Ruby.
    - petercooper 18y ago
      Ruby has had some Unicode support for years. As of 1.9, it supports Unicode directly.
      - SwellJoe 18y ago
        I wasn't aware Ruby 1.9 existed. I thought the current Ruby version was 1.8.mumble. Python 3.0 did just spring into existence while we were having this discussion, and it finally has proper Unicode support. So, there's one less reason to choose Perl over Python. If Ruby has Unicode support in 1.9, and 1.9 were widely available, then I guess that'd be true of Ruby as well. But, I just went to the Ruby website and it looks like 1.8.7 is the Ruby version available. It doesn't have Unicode support, does it?
        petercooper 18y ago
        Strictly, strictly, strictly speaking, you're right: 1.8.7 is the current "production" version of Ruby. However, Ruby 1.9 has been around for about a year now (considered a "development" release) but Ruby 1.9.1 will become the "production" version of Ruby when it's released in the next month (yeah, I know that makes no sense). The current preview releases are pretty spot on though - so we're in a transitional phase. Ruby 1.9's performance is also somewhat better than that of 1.8. On the 1.8 front, Ruby 1.8 has had what's called KCODE for years now, which enables Unicode support for various bits and pieces (primarily regular expressions). More info on this here: http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_and_jcode_library http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_...
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        If we're not strictly speaking about stable, widely available versions, how about we talk about how awesome Perl 6 is? Because it really is astonishingly, mind-bendingly awesome. Granted, the leading Perl 6 implementation is still a little over a year away (though Parrot hits 1.0 in March, which is a pretty cool milestone in and of itself), and I imagine Ruby 1.9 will be widely available long before then.

schtog 18y ago

Good. Let Python take over the dynamic scripting language space completely.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
d0mine 18y ago
Let us not jump to conclusions: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+ruby,+php&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+rub... http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKILL/PYTHON.d/stats.20081202.1428.png http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKIL...
- icey 18y ago
  Removing Java and C from your list makes it much easier to see what's going on: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby%2C+php&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby%2C+...
  - patio11 18y ago
    Right. Now view the same stats in Relative (which makes the trending more visible): http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,+perl,+ruby,+php&l=&relative=1 http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,+perl,+ruby,+php&#3... The numbers say what most people know: that set of four languages contains 1 that is mature and 3 that are growing. One of them is growing fairly rapidly relative to where it was when the data set started out.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      You wouldn't consider PHP mature?
      - icey 18y ago
        Or Python, for that matter... I mean, it's 17 years old. It can drive a car and almost vote!

petercooper 18y ago

Some utterly ridiculous FUD about Ruby in there. I can't make Java scale.. but that's not because it can't - just because I don't know Java well at all. If you're not already good at something, of course it's easy to say something else doesn't work or isn't any good.

scw 18y ago
Flatly claiming that Rails can't scale is overstating the case, but their is some truth to it: relative to other frameworks / languages, the effort required to scale Rails is greater than other popular languages. This has improved with mongrel_cluster and (more recently) Passenger, but the memory footprint for a Rails application continues to be an issue, even relative to other dynamic languages.
- petercooper 18y ago
  I'm intrigued.. do the efforts to scale Ruby and Perl differ significantly beyond their respective base-line performance? Interpreter level threads and multi-process based techniques have tended to be common approaches in both various Perl and Ruby projects I've worked with.
staunch 18y ago
It seems like each language only gets to have a one-liner description in everyone's head. Ruby is "can't scale". Perl is "line noise". Python is "clean, but boring" (or something), Java is "verbose and corporate", C++ is "overly complex", Lisp is "for kooks", etc, etc...
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  In other words, the way programming languages are marketed matters.
  - michaelneale 18y ago
    And fashion, lets not forget the fashion. What's this seasons colour?

staunch 18y ago

I still use Perl to this day because of Catalyst + DBIx::Class + CPAN. I can feel like I can do basically any web development task at least as elegantly, cleanly, and quickly as I could with Ruby or Python. Because of CPAN I think Perl probably wins more often than not on the speed aspect. I also tend to have a lot of backend stuff that runs as daemons/cronjobs, etc. Perl is really great for that stuff. Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in. But they're just passing by each other headed the opposite direction right now. The stigma Perl has just makes it seem worse than it is objectively. Today Perl 5 is still a very reasonable choice IMHO. I'll switch to Ruby or Python full-time at some point. If Perl 6 ends up being better at some point I'll switch to that. We used to have to choose between C++ and Java and Perl. Perl was so much nicer. Now we have to choose between three languages that are all heaven by comparison. I don't really care which "wins" because I will no matter what.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
> Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in Tossing aside this obviously flawed TIOBE thingy (Delphi, wtf?) I see no evidence of this. CPAN contributions are accelerating, not flat-lining. Perl's domination over Python and Ruby in the corporate environment continues.
- staunch 18y ago
  I think you have to be deluding yourself to not recognize this as true. Of course Perl is very far from dead, but the early adopters and influential people are moving away. Don't forget that C++/Java had the corporate environments back when Perl kicked their asses.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    All you seem to be saying is you FEEL Perl is losing some sort of race. I don't share that feeling and I don't see any hard evidence of it. By all reasonable metrics perl continues to grow.

Tichy 18y ago

I can't take an article serious that lists Visual Basic and Delphi among the top ten programming languages. Maybe they are still very common, but even if they really are, they are definitely not common in the "world" that I am interested in.

ars 18y ago
So if the data doesn't match your expectations change it?
- Tichy 18y ago
  No, I am just saying that this data lumps totally unrelated fields together. I would guess that VB is maybe used by Excel users who write little scriplets for their Excel sheets, but rarely by programmers. It is like saying "PCs and cars are the most popular products in the world", since I am not interested in cars, I simply don't care. I only care about the popularity of PCs. The data is correct, but it is irrelevant to me.
  - ars 18y ago
    You're wrong though. VB is used for many desktop applications, not just "excel scripts". But it seems that you don't want to change your beliefs even in the face of evidence. Sure, it's always possible to set up the selection criteria ("only language used by companies I like") such that the answer will be what you expect - but how is that valuable?
    - Tichy 18y ago
      Still, is VB really competing with Perl?
      - ars 18y ago
        If you define competing as "what language should I used for this app" then no. VB is way better then perl for desktop apps, and perl way better than VB for text processing and web apps. But if you define competing as "what language should I learn in order to get a job" then yes, they are competing. PS: I know, and have used, both in different jobs, so it's not really competition because you can do both. But if you are only going to learn one, then yes, they are competing.

jodrellblank 18y ago

If you have to "reinvent the language and the community", how does that count as Perl 5 surviving?

greyman 18y ago

I agree with one redditor who blames perl6 for this state. Indeed, who would start a new project in perl5, when the language becomes obsolete by perl6, but on the other side, you have to wait and wait again for perl6 to be actually delivered. I think they had to either deliver perl6 a few years ago, or not doing it at all and continue to improve perl5. But in this situation, many people are just not willing to invest into perl and are looking for the greener pastures.