Slashdot Mirror
Interviews: Ask Perl Creator Larry Wall a Question
Larry Wall created the Perl programming language (as well as the Unix utility patch, and the Usenet client rn ). This Christmas saw the release of Perl 6 -- a "sister" language to the original Perl -- that's also free and open source, after 15 years of development. Now Larry has agreed to give some of his time to answer your questions (joking that "I doubt my remarks will be quite as controversial as, say, Donald Trump's, but I suspect I could say an interesting thing or two...")
Larry also gave Slashdot's very first interview back in 2002 -- so it's high time we had him back for more heartfelt and entertaining insights. Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. (And feel free to also leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.) We'll pick the very best questions -- and forward them on to Larry Wall himself.
Larry also gave Slashdot's very first interview back in 2002 -- so it's high time we had him back for more heartfelt and entertaining insights. Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. (And feel free to also leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.) We'll pick the very best questions -- and forward them on to Larry Wall himself.
Perl used to be central to so many things (the 'glue' language for the internet), but seems to be slowly falling out of use in deference to javascript, java, python, vbscript/powershell, etc. It's the language I used in my first job as a system administrator (back around the time you gave your first interview), and I loved it.
With so many years between the announcement of Perl 6 and it's completion, many people moved on to other solutions or technologies. Perl 6 is here now, but why should I use it?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Why is the syntax of perl so bad? It lends itself to scripts that even the authors can't understand after a week or two.
Perl and "Rizla fine rolling papers" should have a common tag line :
It's what you make of it
Why has perl6 flopped?
And "I don't think it has" is not a valid answer.
What do you think about Python . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yeah, right. Just as C lends itself to it, just look at IOCCC.
You can write shitty perl code, but you can also write beautiful code that is easy to read and maintain since perl is very high level and you don't need to bog down into technical details to solve everyday stuff. Just describe your algorithm and let modules do the heavy lifting (don't reinvent the wheel).
Just because a sysadmin hacks together a five line perl script to fix an acute problem, doesn't mean that all perl code is shitty.
Perl is proven to be fundamentally broken. Here are two very entertaining videos about how to exploit weird array casting, hashes and so on.
I really think every perl programmer should have seen it.
https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_...
https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-71...
What do you say about this criticism and the exploited flaws?
I'm a big fan of Perl and still use it when I can for various personal projects and have been known to introduce it in official work-related tasks (where engineers were using batch files or shell scripts, etc.). I love Perl's terseness and flexibility. I learned regex from Perl in my first development job and it has stuck with me through a dozen different languages.
However, as many others have mentioned, it is falling out of favor, and in fact there are very few development shops that even have a need or desire for it. I've looked for Perl jobs and they rarely come up. It seems that most back-ends are now being written in any number of next-gen scripting languages like Python, JavaScript (NodeJS), and Swift. I don't see the advantages of these, but it's often hard to explain to colleagues, CTOs, managers, etc. the value of Perl over the newest trends. And Perl "6" is meaningless because to everyone else it's still Perl. Why should we choose Perl 6 over the new establishment?
Can you give us a glimpse into what your main work computer looks like? What's the hardware and OS, your preferred editor and browser, and any crucial software you want to give a shout-out to?
1. According to most metrics Perl 5 usage hasn't decreased but there is a perception problem indicating it has. Perl usage outstrips python by a lot but many think the opposite is true. Why do you think this perception exists? Is it related to calling the new language Perl 6 giving people the false impression that Perl 5 hasn't progressed as dramatically as it has in the past few years?
2. As a Perl 5 programmer, why should I care about Perl 6? Perl is most used by sysadmins and Perl 5 of some sort can be found on all major *nix distributions out of the box. Without this support Perl 6 might as well not even exist for this group who already have to code for Perl versions a decade out of date in many cases. How, if at all, do you see Perl 6 resolving this problem or do you see Perl 6 hitting a different base altogether?