Slashdot Mirror
Perl Is Undead
Ptolemarch writes At the Yet Another Perl Conference beginning today in Orlando, the first keynote squarely blamed Slashdot for starting the "Perl is Dead" meme in 2005. Let's be clear: if Perl was ever dead, it must now be undead. If you can't be at YAPC, you can still watch it live.
I don't think we're ever going to get as clear of an example of the second system effect as Perl 6. If you asked me back in 2005 if I thought it was going to take more than a decade for the next Perl version bump, I would have said no way. Now I'm wondering if Larry and company shouldn't just ditch Perl 6 and come out with Perl 7, that is basically just Perl 5 with some tweaks to make complex data structures less of a nightmare and better integrate the object model, plus some tweaks around the edges like the implicit /x switch on regular expressions.
I read the internet for the articles.
Maybe Perl isn't completely "dead", but it sure as fuck isn't as vibrant of a scene as it once was.
In the 1990s, Perl was THE BIG THING . It was cool. It was trend-setting. It was what let average programmers and sys admins become superheroes, and it let good and great programmers and sysadmins become ABSOLUTE GODS .
Knowing Perl was what got you jobs. Knowing Perl was what let you get the hard work done fast. Knowing Perl was essential. If you didn't know Perl, you were SHIT IN A URINAL .
Perl's got some fierce competitors now. Python can do everything Perl can do, but with a way cleaner syntax. Ruby isn't as capable as Perl or Python, but it has a religious aspect to it that makes some hipsters go absolutely batshit crazy for it. Perl just can't compete against them.
Yeah, Perl isn't dead, and there are a lot of people who still use it today. But let's not kid ourselves, it's not the 1990s. It's not the GLORY DAYS OF PERL , when it ruled the roost.
Larry killed Perl, 14 years and counting and still no Perl 6 production release.
Meanwhile, Perl 5 being phased out of system building / admin tools and web frameworks. Even Perl 5 is dying.
Meanwhile, it's apparent that slashdot itself uses Perl e.g: http://slashdot.org/job_board....
... it's just the way people use it.
Perl was designed as a powerful, flexible, loosely typed scripting language for munging text files and streams, and that's exactly what it is.
It's great for those scripts that you write for a particular task and never use again after the few days it was necessary. It's also good for writing glue code on occasion, to tie the inputs and outputs of other applications together, and when shell scripting just won't quite cut it.
The trouble was that it was such a useful scripting language people started writing applications in it. Then they had to jump on the object-oriented bandwagon, which was done clumsily. Sort of like gluing a dog to your horse so it can fetch. And yes, it can be difficult to read, but it doesn't have to be.
Use Perl for the tasks it was originally designed for. If you're going to write real applications, use a more appropriate language. Don't kick your dog because he can't sing.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
Because of the lack of new projects being done with it. I can't remember the last time a [major] web site or web framework was done in Perl. It seems like the whole "ruby on rails" fad is over, but even things like Django (Python), .NET, Java, PHP, and even stuff like "Go" have stolen Perl's Thunder on the Web front.
Well what about as your standard workhorse for script kiddies? Seems like Python has cleaned Perl's clock. For me - I've been a die-hard Perl guy for 10 years. The past couple years, I've worked with many different technologies such as 2d/3d CAD projects, Blender (3d adnimation), Inkscape (2d illustration), GNU Radio, OpenStack (cloud), and even Amazon AWS [libraries]. You know what was the striking commonality to all of these? They were done in Python.
Tiny exception was in the last case (above - Amazon AWS libraries) had several different language options but had *NO* Perl options whatsoever. So the language that was once so revolutionary because of the abundance of CPAN libraries available for it starts to not have newer libraries built/ported to it. Furthermore, binding stuff to Perl can be difficult. So much so that most modern distros will make their own "Perl library" [RPMs] - and one of the reasons being is that a standard CPAN module installation won't work due to problems linking/binding/building across all these different environments with very different prerequisites. Most third party Python stuff I have acquired is most often "native python", and works across all types of exotic platforms - even on iOS and Google App Engine.
As for me - I had to switch away from my beloved Perl over to Python for the aforementioned reasons. There are still several things I miss very much - the abilities to so easily spawn and fork "helper" processes, the ease it which it integrates regular expressions, how it can manipulate files, etc. All these things *can* be done with Python, they're just integrated into Perl much better IMHO.
It seems like Perl 6 was supposed to use something similar to Java's "JVM" microcode interpreter. This could have been a possibility to run Perl in embedded sandbox-type environments (like parking meters and smartphones), but it never happened.
So, I do believe Perl is dead. I miss it for what it was, what it is, and what might have been!