On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:39 PM, G. Wade Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 6 Feb 2013 11:05:56 -0600 > "B. Estrade" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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. > > I like that. > >> 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. > > Despite the somewhat inflammatory terminology, I partly agree with you. > I know 15 years ago, it seemed that every book I saw on Java had an > obligatory "bash other languages, but especially Perl" chapter. In a > way, it was inevitable. Back then, Perl was the language to beat in the > non-compiled space. Almost everyone felt the need to show why they were > better than the established language.
I meant no offense. Perl was more or less a toehold for me during a part of my life spent lost in the blue sky of academia. Without it, I might have lost my marbles big time. The video of the roundtable at HOPL III with Larry Wall as a panelist is pretty interesting. He's surrounded by some pretty heavy hitting academics who have a dog in the paradigm space. It's behind a paywall, but if you have ACM access, it is really worth a watch (really just to see how awkward it is as points). http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1238844 > >> In the video Conway makes another good point that nearly all languages >> do most things well or good enough. This is an indication that > > Since all general purpose languages are Turing-Complete, there is > nothing that one can do that cannot be done in all. The differences are > more in syntax, culture, and what the language makes easy. > >> 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. > > I think you are right. In a lot of ways, you could argue that > programmers pick a language because of the way it looks and who are the > people using it. > > Unfortunately, programmers seem to try to convince themselves that they > are making these kinds of decisions (programming language, editor, > brace style) for logical, rational reasons. Yeah, and they get into arguments and angry over it. Clearly an indication that something irrational is happening. > > I wrote about this almost two years ago > (http://anomaly.org/wade/blog/2011/03/programmer_beliefs.html). Nice article. Thank you, Brett > > Shrug, > G. Wade > -- > One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, > One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, > In the land of Redmond, where the Windows lie. > _______________________________________________ > Houston mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston > Website: http://houston.pm.org/ _______________________________________________ Houston mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston Website: http://houston.pm.org/
