The routes one comes to a programming language are definitely varied in nature
and scope. And most of the people I work with don't argue that Perl isn't
capable, its just that in so many different ways, there's a strong bias toward
something else.
Speaking about my own $DAYJOB now, we use quite a bit of Perl internally, the
most interesting application being a security-analysis DSL that processes
hundreds of thousands of security events an hour. But we have long past reached
the point where Perl (yes, we are using *shudder* threaded Perl) can handle
this load at scale and we are replacing the whole lot of it with Erlang (Real
Soon Now). On my own team which writes common enterprise web services, our bias
is toward Erlang and then Python as a fallback. On the common UI front our
bias is toward Javascript and PHP (although we are currently in a Thunderdome
style death match between PHP and Python - two languages enter, one language
leaves...) The bias towards a back end processing language here is not
actually a "vanity" preference, although those biases seep into the choice
among suitable languages for the job (for example, there's no technical reason
why we should necessarily pick Erlang over
Go or Clojure, we just happen to have a number of talented Erlang programmers
here already so why move away from it when it's totally adequate? (P.S. Don't
get me wrong, Erlang has a syntax only its mother could love, and it drives me
crazy sometimes, but people say that about Perl too :)))
If your primarily object with a given programming language "A" is to serve
requests for content over HTTP, then yes, there are about 11ty billion (give or
take 3) that will meet your needs. Heck you could probably write a whole Mojo
style HTTP service stack in Brainfuck (not that you should! mind you), so on
that point I agree that a lot of language preference tends to be some kind of
vanity choice (like, I am really smug, so I need to write Ruby, or I am really
anal about whitespace, so I need to write in Python, or I prefer to write what
looks like line noise so I pick Perl...)
So anyway, alas, my interaction with Perl in a day-to-day way is mostly in my
side projects or in my role as a maintainer of perldoc or Net::Amazon::EC2 and
I don't expect that will be changing soon even if I were to take a new $DAYJOB
somewhere. (P.P.S. Note to any recruiters: not currently looking, but thanks
for asking.)
Mark
________________________________
From: B. Estrade <[email protected]>
To: "Houston.pm located in Houston, TX." <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: [pm-h] Perl 7?
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Mark Allen <[email protected]> wrote:
> This conversational topic comes up from time to time and it really is a
> bikeshed.
>
> It's going to take more than a new version number to get (most) people
> (re-)interested in Perl in a major way.
>
> That's my NSHO.
This is a good recent interview with Damian Conway.
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/conway-perl
He compares Perl to the air we breath, you don't notice it much
because it's all around you. I tend to agree.
Regarding the lack of interest in Perl, I've come to the conclusion
that if you come from a traditional *nix POV, Perl is inevitable in
your progression from writing shell scripts. Some move on, but I
gather many do not - and why would you? My point is that it might
have more to do with a decline (or lack of noise from) true
*nixphiles. You might jump to Ruby due to Puppet if you're managing
largish infrastructure; I am not sure how one would fall into Python
from this path, but I am sure there are ways.
People who poo-poo Perl 5 typically are typically paradigm
(OOP/functional/DSL) zealots and language snobs. I think it gets lost
on them the originating purpose and goals of Perl.
In the video Conway makes another good point that nearly all languages
do most things well or good enough. This is an indication that
programming languages and environments are pretty close to being a
"finished" technology (sort of like cars, radios, tvs, refrigerators,
etc). The point of me bringing this up is to say that I think at this
point in the game, people are making language decisions on the same
kinds of reasons that they choose to drive one car over the other.
Brett
>
> Mark
>
> ________________________________
> From: B. Estrade <[email protected]>
> To: "Houston.pm located in Houston, TX." <[email protected]>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 9:52 AM
> Subject: [pm-h] Perl 7?
>
> It's a bike shed (symbolic and shrewd as it may be), but I like the
> idea...and not just because I've mentioned this myself to anyone who'd
> listen. :)
>
> http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2013/02/perl-7.html
>
> Brett
> _______________________________________________
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> Website: http://houston.pm.org/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Houston mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston
> Website: http://houston.pm.org/
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