15 ms·

Perl 5.18.1. Yes, it's alive

68 points by lelf 13y ago

aaronbrethorst 13y ago
What on earth was the point of the quote that introduced this release? It felt like a retread of Andreessen's famous "poorly debugged set of device drivers" line. Are we still on Slashdot? Is it 2005? Hot grits! Natalie Portman!
- ehsanu1 13y ago
  Point or not, I actually found it interesting. Quoting part of the quote: You’ve got gigabyte disks; you’ve got megabyte RAMs. The book this appears in was published 2009, though the interview with Chuck Moore surely happened somewhat earlier. But yay for triple order-of-magnitude improvements!
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Were people still excited about Perl in 2005??!
  - ttflee 13y ago
    I was excited about Perl for the first time when I learned it in about 2005. I was using perl to glue data and NCBI Blast to do some naive BioInfo pseudo research, from today's perspective.
- cmccabe 13y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty bizarre. Was slashdot still relevant in 2005? Was perl? I feel like they both peaked right around the turn of the century.
  - berntb 13y ago
    This was funny. Yesterday, cmccabe was snarky about subtle changes in versions of the Python/Ruby std libs. Today, he/she is snarky about a similar language, which really take backwards compatibility seriously. (Google darkpan/backpan for discussions.) (But ok, he do seem to not have looked at Perl since the turn of the century.)
    - cmccabe 13y ago
      OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. And the quote is definitely bizarre. Can you explain how it's related to Perl? I agree that Perl has done a very good job with backwards compatibility. I have run many ancient Perl scripts that all work fine, and yes, CPAN is huge. I never liked the language, but that for other reasons, not worth going into here. Feel free to mod me down or whatever, just speaking what is on my mind.
      - berntb 13y ago
        >>OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. Thanks for making HN a bit more like bad Reddit today, with even more brainless language wars! [Edit: Seriously, why even write if you have nothing to add but a "cheap shot" -- which is even written by others ("not the only one")!? Do you try to destroy this website?] [Edit 2: I realize that the language wars idiots in some communities usually votes up comments like this about Perl, but take some damn responsibility for HN quality. Karma is not money.] >>Can you explain how [the quote is] related to Perl? If you're curious, please check the comment by Mithaldu, written before my first comment.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        > OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. "I wasn't the only one" is a very weak justification for actions. Either way, why does the quote have to be related to Perl? I've been reading Stroustroup's 4th Edition of TC++PL and it has quotes at the beginning of every chapter, not all of which pertain directly to C++. Is that not Stroustroup's right as the author to choose whichever quote he feels best appropriate?
- stiff 13y ago
  Seems like a tradition of the Perl folks: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/05/msg187214.html http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/05/ms... The Chuck Moore quote is especially ironic given what Perl represents in the programming language design space...
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  In short: Larry started it by quoting Lord of the Rings, later release managers rolled with it. They aren't necessarily reflective on the release or current issues, but mostly there because the release manager felt like it. For more detail: http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob/HEAD:/Porting/epigraphs.pod http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob/HEAD:/Porting/epigra...
- lmm 13y ago
  Don't forget "perl 6 is a mistake".
laichzeit0 13y ago
And those of us who know Perl will continue to use it as syntax and a couple of cute features is hardly enough impetus to throw away years and years of accumulated experience in the language and libraries to learn Python or Ruby or whatever else is the New Perl (tm). And I will continue coding in C and PHP because those are workhorses I'm equally expert at. Newfags always gonna hate oldfags and their rusty (but trusty) old battle-hardened toolboxes.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  While i appreciate the start of this post, there is no need to attack others or resort to name-calling.
supercoder 13y ago
Even though it's not popular to say so, I really like Perl. It's a shame it got a reputation as being uncool as it's a very capable language and nice eco system. I also think the criticism about unreadability is way overblow, it's what you make of it really.
- lelf 13y ago
  I feel it got a reputation of @#$@#(==~/s(.*)+) language that was updated last time in 1995. Not that it is uncapable of @@->$/=+s{}. But when you use Modern::Perl; use Moose; it's quite different thing. Perl6 may become cool, but it's a different story. (Moose is full-grown object system, with meta object protocol, nice syntax and implemented completely as a library).
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I kind of like the non-modern parts of Perl myself, for some of the original purpose of making a superset of sed+awk+sh with better control flow constructs and better performance. I don't entirely understand why sed/awk are so popular on HN but old-style Perl isn't, since it's generally nicer and usually faster, for most things the sed/awk/sh combo would be used for.
- bane 13y ago
  I love Perl as well, but it's definitely gotten the reputation as the really awkward nerd among nerds. I agree with lots of people that the early stages of the Perl 6 effort caused so much distraction for so long that Perl 5 languished and lost lots of momentum for the language (and language philosophy). The Perl community, tired of waiting for a workable Perl 6 implementation, has lavished some fine attention to Perl 5 and it's in incredible shape, but the target community, also tired of waiting for Perl 6, has largely moved on. It's going to be tough to bring people back into the fold. Everybody wanted Perl 6, and it barely works now. The features in 6 are amazing (might even be enough to get folks to come back), but the implementations are all over the place. Perl 6 needs a couple of killer apps. The CFG work might have made handling XML stupid simple, but XML is quickly falling out of relevancy. The transition from Perl 5 to Perl 6 might go down as one of the great language mismanagements in history. For goodness sake, it's been in design for almost 14 years! And there are really just now workable implementations coming out, but all are still incomplete, lack features, robustness and speed. I'm also guilty of this, having been excited about Perl 6 a decade ago, but taking a wait and see approach that lasts to this day, until development settles down. I don't want to commit lots of work that will be made obsolete the next time Larry decides to change an operator's semantics. Is it finally time to sit down and learn Perl 6?
Flimm 13y ago
I'm at a Perl conference right now with hundreds of other attendees. Perl definitely is alive.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Are they still selling misogynistic t-shirts? http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Perl_is_my_bitch http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Perl_is_my_bitch It's so telling how Randal Schwartz, purveyor of hooters booth babes and publisher of "amihooternot", chimes in about how it's bad because it gives Perl an image of being the tool of "teen perl hacker misogynist guys," and that's harder to sell to Corporate America. Yet it doesn't even occur to him to mention that it's also bad because it's WRONG and disrespectful to women and offensive to people who aren't sexist. The Perl community certainly has a long standing and well earned reputation of being "teen perl hacker misogynist guys," that drives away both women and Corporate America. See also: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Randal_Schwartz http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Randal_Schwartz http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stonehenge_OSCON_parties http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stonehenge_OSCON_parties http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Acme::Playmate_talk http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Acme::Playmate_talk http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/col59.html http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/col59.html
  - berntb 13y ago
    You are talking about something from year 2000 -- and ... ah, you've written 5 troll comments, the last 4 in 12 minutes. There were less than 30 total comments in this discussion, including those five. You must be the saddest troll on HN. I'll not feed you. Sorry for not brightening your "life".
npongratz 13y ago
Changelog here: https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.18.1/pod/perldelta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.18.1/pod/perldelta.p...
antitrust 13y ago
This is great news. Thanks for posting it. To me, Perl represents the most organic language out there. It arose from a collection of traits in other languages and macro vocabularies. It's held together by a series of lexical assumptions that work because they mirror our intuition. But even more, it's kind of the anarchy zone. You can write whatever type of code you want. However, the people who make readable, clean, efficient, and functional code are the ones who rise. With CPAN, and the ingenuity of millions of Perl hackers, there's nothing it can't do. If you've never tried it, play around in it awhile. You might like it... and stay forever.
- ajtaylor 13y ago
  I first tried perl (and programming in general) back in the mid 90's when I got tired of writing HTML via Word macros and wanted something more interesting. This was perl4 (oraperl to be exact since DBI didn't exist). I haven't looked back.

68 points by lelf 13y ago

What on earth was the point of the quote that introduced this release? It felt like a retread of Andreessen's famous "poorly debugged set of device drivers" line. Are we still on Slashdot? Is it 2005? Hot grits! Natalie Portman!

ehsanu1 13y ago
Point or not, I actually found it interesting. Quoting part of the quote: You’ve got gigabyte disks; you’ve got megabyte RAMs. The book this appears in was published 2009, though the interview with Chuck Moore surely happened somewhat earlier. But yay for triple order-of-magnitude improvements!
SimHacker 13y ago
Were people still excited about Perl in 2005??!
- ttflee 13y ago
  I was excited about Perl for the first time when I learned it in about 2005. I was using perl to glue data and NCBI Blast to do some naive BioInfo pseudo research, from today's perspective.
cmccabe 13y ago
Yeah, it's pretty bizarre. Was slashdot still relevant in 2005? Was perl? I feel like they both peaked right around the turn of the century.
- berntb 13y ago
  This was funny. Yesterday, cmccabe was snarky about subtle changes in versions of the Python/Ruby std libs. Today, he/she is snarky about a similar language, which really take backwards compatibility seriously. (Google darkpan/backpan for discussions.) (But ok, he do seem to not have looked at Perl since the turn of the century.)
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. And the quote is definitely bizarre. Can you explain how it's related to Perl? I agree that Perl has done a very good job with backwards compatibility. I have run many ancient Perl scripts that all work fine, and yes, CPAN is huge. I never liked the language, but that for other reasons, not worth going into here. Feel free to mod me down or whatever, just speaking what is on my mind.
    - berntb 13y ago
      >>OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. Thanks for making HN a bit more like bad Reddit today, with even more brainless language wars! [Edit: Seriously, why even write if you have nothing to add but a "cheap shot" -- which is even written by others ("not the only one")!? Do you try to destroy this website?] [Edit 2: I realize that the language wars idiots in some communities usually votes up comments like this about Perl, but take some damn responsibility for HN quality. Karma is not money.] >>Can you explain how [the quote is] related to Perl? If you're curious, please check the comment by Mithaldu, written before my first comment.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      > OK, I admit it was a cheap shot. But I'm not the only one in the thread making it. "I wasn't the only one" is a very weak justification for actions. Either way, why does the quote have to be related to Perl? I've been reading Stroustroup's 4th Edition of TC++PL and it has quotes at the beginning of every chapter, not all of which pertain directly to C++. Is that not Stroustroup's right as the author to choose whichever quote he feels best appropriate?
stiff 13y ago
Seems like a tradition of the Perl folks: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/05/msg187214.html http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/05/ms... The Chuck Moore quote is especially ironic given what Perl represents in the programming language design space...
Mithaldu 13y ago
In short: Larry started it by quoting Lord of the Rings, later release managers rolled with it. They aren't necessarily reflective on the release or current issues, but mostly there because the release manager felt like it. For more detail: http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob/HEAD:/Porting/epigraphs.pod http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob/HEAD:/Porting/epigra...
lmm 13y ago
Don't forget "perl 6 is a mistake".

laichzeit0 13y ago

And those of us who know Perl will continue to use it as syntax and a couple of cute features is hardly enough impetus to throw away years and years of accumulated experience in the language and libraries to learn Python or Ruby or whatever else is the New Perl (tm). And I will continue coding in C and PHP because those are workhorses I'm equally expert at. Newfags always gonna hate oldfags and their rusty (but trusty) old battle-hardened toolboxes.

Mithaldu 13y ago
While i appreciate the start of this post, there is no need to attack others or resort to name-calling.

supercoder 13y ago

Even though it's not popular to say so, I really like Perl. It's a shame it got a reputation as being uncool as it's a very capable language and nice eco system. I also think the criticism about unreadability is way overblow, it's what you make of it really.

lelf 13y ago
I feel it got a reputation of @#$@#(==~/s(.*)+) language that was updated last time in 1995. Not that it is uncapable of @@->$/=+s{}. But when you use Modern::Perl; use Moose; it's quite different thing. Perl6 may become cool, but it's a different story. (Moose is full-grown object system, with meta object protocol, nice syntax and implemented completely as a library).
- _delirium 13y ago
  I kind of like the non-modern parts of Perl myself, for some of the original purpose of making a superset of sed+awk+sh with better control flow constructs and better performance. I don't entirely understand why sed/awk are so popular on HN but old-style Perl isn't, since it's generally nicer and usually faster, for most things the sed/awk/sh combo would be used for.
bane 13y ago
I love Perl as well, but it's definitely gotten the reputation as the really awkward nerd among nerds. I agree with lots of people that the early stages of the Perl 6 effort caused so much distraction for so long that Perl 5 languished and lost lots of momentum for the language (and language philosophy). The Perl community, tired of waiting for a workable Perl 6 implementation, has lavished some fine attention to Perl 5 and it's in incredible shape, but the target community, also tired of waiting for Perl 6, has largely moved on. It's going to be tough to bring people back into the fold. Everybody wanted Perl 6, and it barely works now. The features in 6 are amazing (might even be enough to get folks to come back), but the implementations are all over the place. Perl 6 needs a couple of killer apps. The CFG work might have made handling XML stupid simple, but XML is quickly falling out of relevancy. The transition from Perl 5 to Perl 6 might go down as one of the great language mismanagements in history. For goodness sake, it's been in design for almost 14 years! And there are really just now workable implementations coming out, but all are still incomplete, lack features, robustness and speed. I'm also guilty of this, having been excited about Perl 6 a decade ago, but taking a wait and see approach that lasts to this day, until development settles down. I don't want to commit lots of work that will be made obsolete the next time Larry decides to change an operator's semantics. Is it finally time to sit down and learn Perl 6?

Flimm 13y ago

I'm at a Perl conference right now with hundreds of other attendees. Perl definitely is alive.

SimHacker 13y ago
Are they still selling misogynistic t-shirts? http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Perl_is_my_bitch http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Perl_is_my_bitch It's so telling how Randal Schwartz, purveyor of hooters booth babes and publisher of "amihooternot", chimes in about how it's bad because it gives Perl an image of being the tool of "teen perl hacker misogynist guys," and that's harder to sell to Corporate America. Yet it doesn't even occur to him to mention that it's also bad because it's WRONG and disrespectful to women and offensive to people who aren't sexist. The Perl community certainly has a long standing and well earned reputation of being "teen perl hacker misogynist guys," that drives away both women and Corporate America. See also: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Randal_Schwartz http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Randal_Schwartz http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stonehenge_OSCON_parties http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stonehenge_OSCON_parties http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Acme::Playmate_talk http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Acme::Playmate_talk http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/col59.html http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/col59.html
- berntb 13y ago
  You are talking about something from year 2000 -- and ... ah, you've written 5 troll comments, the last 4 in 12 minutes. There were less than 30 total comments in this discussion, including those five. You must be the saddest troll on HN. I'll not feed you. Sorry for not brightening your "life".

npongratz 13y ago

Changelog here: https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.18.1/pod/perldelta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.18.1/pod/perldelta.p...

antitrust 13y ago

This is great news. Thanks for posting it. To me, Perl represents the most organic language out there. It arose from a collection of traits in other languages and macro vocabularies. It's held together by a series of lexical assumptions that work because they mirror our intuition. But even more, it's kind of the anarchy zone. You can write whatever type of code you want. However, the people who make readable, clean, efficient, and functional code are the ones who rise. With CPAN, and the ingenuity of millions of Perl hackers, there's nothing it can't do. If you've never tried it, play around in it awhile. You might like it... and stay forever.

ajtaylor 13y ago
I first tried perl (and programming in general) back in the mid 90's when I got tired of writing HTML via Word macros and wanted something more interesting. This was perl4 (oraperl to be exact since DBI didn't exist). I haven't looked back.