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10 Years ago there was the so called Perl Renaissance. Which should turn Perl around. Sad truth is. People already moved on. Everything to little to late and

10 Years ago there was the so called Perl Renaissance. Which should turn Perl around. Sad truth is. People already moved on. Everything to little to late and not what the people where looking for.

forinti 3y ago
I don't get this line of criticism. Perl is a dynamic language and it gives you a lot of flexibility and allows you to add things you think you need. It's not like Java/Go/Rust where you really have to wait for new syntax in the language. I think maybe whoever thinks like this about Perl shouldn't have been using it in the first place because they needed something different, like a strongly typed language.
- ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
  Apples and Oranges. Php startet as a Perl framework. Ruby is direct reaction to Perls inability to evolve (Perl autobox is great. Why not in core). There is Python. I love Perl. Use it daily. I used Moose, mouse, any::mouse and was excited about p5-mop. But there is no traction in change. Also fact is Perl has a bad image and Perl gets patched out of all projects.
  - darrenf 3y ago
    > Php started as a Perl framework This isn't true. PHP/FI was written in C. Here's Rasmus announcing it to the world in 1995: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi/c/PyJ25gZ6z7A/m/M9FkTUVDfcwJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.c...
forgotmypw17 3y ago
I started a new Perl project 7 years ago and it has been an ecstatic experience for me. It is basically a text processor and HTML generator, so Perl has all the features I need. I am so happy, and I'm not even using anything beyond 5.010. I'm at 32K+ LOC now, and I'm also using the project to teach programming to Ukrainian kids over Zoom. Number of breaking changes I have experienced in these 7 years? 0. Number of times I've had any significant issues setting up a new deployment? 0. It may not be as popular, but it certainly continues to work well.
- Enk1du 3y ago
  There's some nice stuff in the new features and everybody has their favourites. Some like the subroutine signatures, but I'm a big fan of the hash slices and postfix dereferencing in v5.20. https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/category/perl/new-features/ https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/category/perl/new-f...
- wazoox 3y ago
  Yep. The fact that 100% of the code I've written in Perl since the beginning of this century still works just fine year after year with each new release is an immense bonus. I have deployment scripts written on Debian 3 still running in cron "as is" 20 years later, zero maintenance. Try that with Python, PHP or Ruby...
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    That's what I liked about Windows too. I had to move to Linux, but with wine I know I will able able to use some binaries forever. If I write something that I plan to reuse or need again later, I will write it in perl
    - SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
      You may like Haiku, which maintains backwards compatibility with ancient beos while still being posix system. Never used it myself, just repeating what heard.
halayli 3y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's the truth. Back in the 90s many of us invested hundreds of hours mastering Perl and post 2008 ended up using Python/Ruby/etc more frequently for various reasons and now speaking for myself I can barely decipher a line of Perl. It's syntax is extremely hard to maintain in memory when you stop using it.
- em-bee 3y ago
  if people leave perl because of the syntax then a perl renaissance was not going to stop that. the change that had a chance to make the syntax more attractive was perl 6/raku.
- gbacon 3y ago
  Example?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    For me, it was the argument passing syntax. I had to look up the magic sigil for doing hashref stuff every single time. One day I tried Python, learned that everything is passed by object reference, and set Perl aside and never looked back. There was so much less mental overhead that Perl never lured me back.
    - ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
      There was an experimental auto-deref feature since Perl 5.14 And it's already gone again since 5.24.
      - chromatic 3y ago
        That's because it didn't work reliably. There were at least a couple of situations where Perl would have had to guess which operation you were trying to perform, so the feature was a source of potential bugs.
        3y ago

10 Years ago there was the so called Perl Renaissance. Which should turn Perl around. Sad truth is. People already moved on. Everything to little to late and not what the people where looking for.

forinti 3y ago

I don't get this line of criticism. Perl is a dynamic language and it gives you a lot of flexibility and allows you to add things you think you need. It's not like Java/Go/Rust where you really have to wait for new syntax in the language. I think maybe whoever thinks like this about Perl shouldn't have been using it in the first place because they needed something different, like a strongly typed language.

ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
Apples and Oranges. Php startet as a Perl framework. Ruby is direct reaction to Perls inability to evolve (Perl autobox is great. Why not in core). There is Python. I love Perl. Use it daily. I used Moose, mouse, any::mouse and was excited about p5-mop. But there is no traction in change. Also fact is Perl has a bad image and Perl gets patched out of all projects.
- darrenf 3y ago
  > Php started as a Perl framework This isn't true. PHP/FI was written in C. Here's Rasmus announcing it to the world in 1995: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi/c/PyJ25gZ6z7A/m/M9FkTUVDfcwJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.c...

forgotmypw17 3y ago

I started a new Perl project 7 years ago and it has been an ecstatic experience for me. It is basically a text processor and HTML generator, so Perl has all the features I need. I am so happy, and I'm not even using anything beyond 5.010. I'm at 32K+ LOC now, and I'm also using the project to teach programming to Ukrainian kids over Zoom. Number of breaking changes I have experienced in these 7 years? 0. Number of times I've had any significant issues setting up a new deployment? 0. It may not be as popular, but it certainly continues to work well.

Enk1du 3y ago
There's some nice stuff in the new features and everybody has their favourites. Some like the subroutine signatures, but I'm a big fan of the hash slices and postfix dereferencing in v5.20. https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/category/perl/new-features/ https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/category/perl/new-f...
wazoox 3y ago
Yep. The fact that 100% of the code I've written in Perl since the beginning of this century still works just fine year after year with each new release is an immense bonus. I have deployment scripts written on Debian 3 still running in cron "as is" 20 years later, zero maintenance. Try that with Python, PHP or Ruby...
- csdvrx 3y ago
  That's what I liked about Windows too. I had to move to Linux, but with wine I know I will able able to use some binaries forever. If I write something that I plan to reuse or need again later, I will write it in perl
  - SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
    You may like Haiku, which maintains backwards compatibility with ancient beos while still being posix system. Never used it myself, just repeating what heard.

halayli 3y ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's the truth. Back in the 90s many of us invested hundreds of hours mastering Perl and post 2008 ended up using Python/Ruby/etc more frequently for various reasons and now speaking for myself I can barely decipher a line of Perl. It's syntax is extremely hard to maintain in memory when you stop using it.

em-bee 3y ago
if people leave perl because of the syntax then a perl renaissance was not going to stop that. the change that had a chance to make the syntax more attractive was perl 6/raku.
gbacon 3y ago
Example?
- kstrauser 3y ago
  For me, it was the argument passing syntax. I had to look up the magic sigil for doing hashref stuff every single time. One day I tried Python, learned that everything is passed by object reference, and set Perl aside and never looked back. There was so much less mental overhead that Perl never lured me back.
  - ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
    There was an experimental auto-deref feature since Perl 5.14 And it's already gone again since 5.24.
    - chromatic 3y ago
      That's because it didn't work reliably. There were at least a couple of situations where Perl would have had to guess which operation you were trying to perform, so the feature was a source of potential bugs.
      - 3y ago