Slashdot Log In
The State of Scripting Languages
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Aug 29, 2008 04:14 PM
from the coming-along-nicely dept.
from the coming-along-nicely dept.
Esther Schindler writes to tell us that Lynn Greiner has another look at the state of the scripting universe as a follow on to the same topic three years ago. Greiner talks to major players from each of the main scripting languages (PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby, and Javascript) to find out the current status and where they are headed in the future. "The biggest change since 2005 has been the growth of richer Web applications that perform more of their computations in the browser using JavaScript. The demand for these applications has forced developers to learn and use JavaScript much more than before. There's also been a lot of interest in Ruby, another dynamic language, spurred by the release and growth of Ruby on Rails. As a result of these changes, many developers are becoming more comfortable with dynamic languages."
Related Stories
[+]
10 Forces Guiding the Future of Scripting 190 comments
snydeq writes "InfoWorld examines the platforms and passions underlying today's popular dynamic languages, and though JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy, and other scripting tools are fast achieving the critical mass necessary to flourish into the future, 10 forces in particular appear to be driving the evolution of this development domain. From the cooption of successful ideas across languages, to the infusion of application development into applications that are fast evolving beyond their traditional purpose, to the rise of frameworks, the cloud, and amateur code enablers, each will have a profound effect on the future of today's dynamic development tools."
[+]
6 Languages You Wish the Boss Let You Use 264 comments
Esther Schindler writes "Several weeks ago, Lynn Greiner's article on the state of the scripting universe was slashdotted. Several people raised their eyebrows at the (to them) obvious omissions, since the article only covered PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl and JavaScript. As I wrote at the time, Lynn chose those languages because hers was a follow-up to an article from three years back. However, it was a fair point. While CIO has covered several in depth, those five dynamic languages are not the only ones developers use. In 6 Scripting Languages Your Developers Wish You'd Let Them Use, CIO looks at several (including Groovy, Scala, Lua, F#, Clojure and Boo) which deserve more attention for business software development, even if your shop is dedicated to Java or .NET. Each language gets a formal definition and then a quote or two from a developer who explains why it inspires passion."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Schindler's List? (Score:5, Funny)
schindler's list looks neat. I'll go read it sometime.
Caught in a crossfire (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah, I'm not really caught in a crossfire. I still prefer my trusty old Perl over these illegitimate kids and cousins - PHP, Ruby, Python, etc etc.
Re:Caught in a crossfire (Score:5, Insightful)
I am getting more comfortable with Javascript, though I still think DHTML and CSS are fundamentally fucked, and it really is time, if this web delivery of apps thing is for real, to find some more rational means of actually dealing with dynamic content.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really just a problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, you could scrap all this progress and start over on a new standard. Good luck with that.
Parent
Re:Caught in a crossfire (Score:4, Interesting)
I also agree with you on the Javascript side of things. I'm a professional web developer, and I'm writing very complicated applications these days that use almost no postbacks, doing everything in the browser with javascript. It's necessary for performance reasons a lot of times, but developing in javascript is slow and tedious.
The primary flaws in javascript are its lack of namespaces, true OO, and, most of all, its lack of types and type safety. The types alone cause no end of headaches, because the compiler can't easilly find errors before runtime. We're back to the days of running the code, getting a disaster, and then trying to hunt through to figure out what went wrong. Additionally, it is impossible to have full intellisense in such language, so you have to remember large parts of the library, and even if you get pretty good at that (which I have), you still have to constantly go through javascript reference books as you code trying to remember the name of that one function you want to use and can't remember at the moment...
You are right, and such a way has appeared. It is silverlight 2.0. Now those of us who program in .Net can easilly use the .Net framework on the client and the server, and use the same (typesafe!) languages in both locations as well. Silverlight 2 is in beta but should be out by the end of the year, and as soon as it is, I quit javascript. I've trained and used the Silverlight beta already, and within an hour of it I vowed I wouldn't go back to the way things were.
Note: There are still some advantages to DHTML, assuming browsers are standards compliant. Then you don't have to worry about actually drawing animations on the screen... you just go through the DOM, add or remove some elements, change some css here or there, and the browser handles all the drawing for you. I might have stuck with DHTML had the new version of ECMAScript (the official name of Javascript) actually passed, since it was going to have features like namespaces, true OO, etc. But it was foolishly killed, and with that I leave. I wouldn't be suprised if vast portions of the web migrate away from HTML over the next 10 years because of that. And the glacial slowness at moving to XHTML 2 doesn't help either. It's gotten so bad vendors are trying to start an HTML 5 in the meantime, and I'm not going back to a DOM not based on XML, either. I refuse to be stuck in the past with all the problems of the HTML line.
Parent
Re:Caught in a crossfire (Score:5, Informative)
The primary flaws in javascript are its lack of namespaces, true OO, and, most of all, its lack of types and type safety.
The primary flaws in javascript are developers that do not understand the fundamentals of the JS language (and I don't mean to be attacking anyone particular, this is just a really common problem).
JS is 100% Object Oriented. Just because it contains Functions as first class objects and Closures does not mean it is not Object Oriented. Everything in JS is and object, everything. There are no classes because it's a prototypical system not a classical system. The fact that all things are objects and that JS contains closures means that Namespacing does exist, if you have some specific reason to use, just by creating an object to represent the name space and keep all namespace protected objects in that objects scope.
Also JS is completely type safe. You can not cast an object to a type that it is not (something you can do in none type safe languages like C). What you meant to say is Strongly Static typed, which is found in only a few languages and is a huge hinderance in those languages. Duck Typing, as implemented in JS and few other languages, is far more flexible and just as robust as you still can't screw with memory arbitrarily.
The only thing I would give you is that it would be interesting if JS variables could be typed (as the objects already are). This would allow the runtime environment to determine type conflicts and for an IDE to be able to have additional autocompletion options. But sadly this would just lead to other problems just as difficult.
Parent
Re:Caught in a crossfire (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, that's a pretty extreme point of view. Static typing may be "found in only a few languages" but those languages happen to be the most popular languages by far. Just because every man and his dog has written an interpreted language without static type checking doesn't mean it's somehow a small irrelevant feature. In fact as code bases become larger it becomes nearly essential. I don't see how you can claim it's a "huge hindrance" - you sound like something of a cowboy programmer to be honest. Defining and declaring your types up front may seem inconvenient but it means your codebase can scale, more bugs are found ahead of time, future programmers can more easily comprehend your code and compilers can optimize your code much more easily.
If there was some kind of efficient, statically typed language available for use in web browsers making it run fast wouldn't be a research problem, and we could replace the unintuitive CSS box model with something that actually worked for web apps. The reason you can't do this today is that JavaScript is just too damn slow to do real time GUI reflow, so you have to let the web browser do it in C++, so you're stuck with CSS.
The OP doesn't have to wait for SilverLight to get the benefits of static typing however. GWT does the exact same thing today, for Java.
Parent
Scripting language. What is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone come up with a really good definition of a "scripting language"?
As far as I can tell, it's a vaguly amorphous definition based on some notion of interpretedness, but C interpreters exist, for instance, and TCC can be used to run C "scripts".
Re:Scripting language. What is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, as Python, Ruby, etc. are compiled to byte code which run on virtual machines, just like Java...yet no one calls Java a scripting language. So I'm not sure either. Maybe it's "dynamically typed and either interpreted or runs on a virtual machine"?
To be honest, Bash is one of the few 100% interpreted languages I know, and the only one I call a scripting language these days.
Parent
Re:Scripting language. What is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
python - an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
ruby - Interpreted object-oriented scripting language
java - Java interpreter
First of all, ruby's man page calls itself a scripting language, and secondly...
#!/usr/bin/java
println("Hello World!");
Oh right...
You can call all of these "interpreted" languages, but the ones with interactive prompts, or able to execute a source input file I throw at it, those are scripting languages. Java is nowhere NEAR a scripting language, it was not built for this. The other languages WERE built for this. It's an important distinction, and it doesn't make a perl/python/ruby developer any less of a man. Honestly, the interactive portion, and executing with #!/usr/bin/foo are the #1 and #2 indicators that it qualifies as "scripting".
You almost sound like "scripting language" is derogatory. Well, it's not.
Many people WANT scripting functionality for the Java platform, but it isn't here until I can run a one liner from the command line.
Parent
Syntax argument. (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, it was an argument about scripting languages - the only difference is syntax. Yeah, yeah, one language make it easier for the programmer to manipulate text or to develop some functionality for a particular task. But this jazz of "the right tool for the right job" is non-sense. We're talking about programming languages: not screwdrivers, drills and hammers. It's all going to be a processor's instruction set one way or another.
Secondly, this article is in CIO. WTF does a CIO have to worry about languages for? That's the development manager's problem. The CIO's problem is the management of the organization and the technology big picture. How said technology is implemented isn't his problem: that's just minor details. I guess a micro manger would be concerned about a scripting language. If that's the case, he needs to quit and get a tech management job.
Just my two cents.
Re:Syntax argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like a comment from twenty years ago. These days, with fast hardware and lots of memory, for a great many purposes making things easier and faster for the programmer is the most important goal.
Scripting languages also differ in more than syntax. They differ in the set of primitives and available library functions and in the efficiency of implementation of different components.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, one language make it easier for the programmer to manipulate text or to develop some functionality for a particular task. But this jazz of "the right tool for the right job" is non-sense. We're talking about programming languages: not screwdrivers, drills and hammers. It's all going to be a processor's instruction set one way or another.
Sure! So Python and COBOL are exactly equivalent and there's no real reason you'd pick one over the other.
You know, there's more to a language than Turing completeness.
Major players? (Score:4, Informative)
John Lam leads the IronRuby team at Microsoft.
Okay, John Lam is doing amazing work and IronRuby will likely be of some importance in the Ruby world one day, but "major player"? Microsoft's a major player generally, but in the Ruby world they are not. There are 1001 more notable people in the Ruby community who probably would have been up for this article - Chad Fowler, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, Matz himself.. They seem to have picked senior figures for all of the other languages (except PHP). CIO.com is not that poorly connected, surely?
Re:Major players? (Score:5, Funny)
but in the Ruby world they are not
Of course they aren't. Ruby is for fashion programmers with iMacs, iTunes and iPhones. Ruby is for programmers who moonlight as bar tenders. Ruby is for companies with numbers in their name. Ruby is for minimalists who eschew corporate wisdom. Ruby is for those who use words like eschew.
Ruby is hip. It is edgy. If you went into a bar and said "I use Ruby", you would get first game on the pool table. If you use Ruby, people call you by your initials, not your name.
You dont use Ruby to just get work done. No sir. You use Ruby to make a statement about who you are.
CF, DT, DHH and M himself are all cool beyond belief. They are the superstar hipsters of our modern programming world. C programmers, Java programmers and .NET programmers could never be as cool as DHH--not even on the best day of their lives.
Go home you Microsoft Player. Go home you inbred C programmers and Billy-Joe-PHP'ers. You are the rednecks of the computing world. You are the fly-over programming languages that keep us busy wondering who uses your language as we our active records fly over your heads.
Parent
Re:Major players? (Score:5, Informative)
That was a pretty reasonable guess, except it isn't correct. :-)
Lynn understandably went back to the same people, initially, since it would be easiest to say, "Hey, three years ago you said this... change you mind on anything?" Some of the guys didn't have the time (for example, Guido's a little busy with the next version of Python), so she asked who they'd recommend she speak with instead. To my understanding, Dave Thomas suggested Lam. Though he might have suggested someone else who suggested Lam.
IOW it had nothing to do with Microsoft. Though, come to think of it, it could be a good idea to ask all the Scripting Dudes and Dudettes from Microsoft for their opinions on stuff. Hmmmmmm.
Parent
quality and libraries, but quality of libraries? (Score:5, Insightful)
This essentially summarizes the reasons I prefer to use Perl: the quality of the implementation, and the good libraries. However, there is a dark side that we Perl lovers don't talk about much, which is that although Perl has good quality and good libraries, many of the libraries are not of good quality. My purpose here isn't to name names and rip into individuals who have contributed open-source code to CPAN out of the goodness of their hearts, but honestly, some of the code on CPAN is of very low quality and/or very poorly maintained. Quite a few CPAN libraries are basically glue that interfaces to some C code, and when you look at some of that C code, it looks like examples of the worst coding practices of the 1980's, before the internet existed, and before it really registered on coders' consciousnesses that buffer overflows, etc., were not just bugs but security holes. I've had a couple of bad experiences where I hitched my wagon to a particular CPAN module, and later had serious problems because that module was not actively maintained. E.g., crippling bugs would go unfixed for a year at a time.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that any of the other scripting languages come off any better. What the article says really is true: the base implementations of the other scripting languages are really not anywhere near as solid as Perl's is -- probably partly because Perl is so much older than the others, and therefore more mature. But this may change a lot in the future. Perl 6 is eventually going to be ready for prime time, and there will be a certain amount of chaos and confusion and bugginess at that point, as everyone adapts to the new environment. Also, Perl's head-start in terms of maturity will start to mean less and less as time goes on and the other scripting languages start to get more mature.
Things haven't improved much. (Score:5, Interesting)
They all still suck for about the same reasons they sucked three years ago.
The problems of Perl are well known, but it's probably the closest thing to "write once, run everywhere" that we have. Perl is essentially static at Perl 5. There's a Perl 6 effort, with a major language redesign, expected to ship shortly after Duke Nukem Forever.
PHP is gaining because it's a simple way to do dynamic web site back ends. It's not a great language, and limited to its niche, but useful there.
TCL was never a very good programming language, and it hasn't improved much.
Python is a nice language, but it still suffers from the limitations of the CPython implementation. It's slow, and integration with standard C modules is troublesome. Python has distro packaging problems - the Python maintainers don't coordinate with the maintainers of key modules, like the ones for talking to databases, and as a result Linux distros don't consistently ship with a CPython and a set of modules that play well together. That's why Python hasn't replaced Perl.
Javascript is a moderately painful language, yet we all have to use it. The object model is ill-designed; borrowing from Self was a mistake. Too much use is made of "eval", creating the "JSON" security hole. (Memo to language designers: don't combine the primitives for reading a string into an internal representation and for executing the internal representation. LISP has the "reader" and "eval"; Javascript has one function that does both.) Variable scope, given that the language has "var", is badly thought out. (Python is one of the few languages that does implicit declarations well. Perl had to retrofit "my", and Javascript had to retrofit "var", and in both cases, implicit declarations stayed, confusing the issue.) Because of this, Javascript has scaling problems. Attempts are made to paper this over with "toolkits", usually a bad sign.
I can't really say much about Ruby.
It's interesting that nobody uses Java applets much any more. It's worth understanding why that failed. But that's another subject.
Re:Things haven't improved much. (Score:4, Informative)
Three years ago, ctypes [python.org] wasn't part of the standard library. It is now, and it's great, not troublesome at all.
Can you give an example? The DB-API [python.org] seems like good coordination to me and easy_install psycopg2 and similar have never let me down.
Parent
Re:Things haven't improved much. (Score:5, Informative)
There's a Perl 6 effort, with a major language redesign, expected to ship shortly after Duke Nukem Forever.
Only someone who hasn't been paying attention would believe that. Perl 6, the language, is largely completely specified at this point. Meanwhile, Pugs has gone a long, long way to a working Perl 6 implementation, and the vast strides in Parrot mean Rakudo, the Perl6-on-Parrot implementation, has made immense progress in the last six months.
Does that means Perl 6 will be out this year? No. There's still plenty of work to do. But the idea that Perl 6 has anything at all in common with DNF (which, unlike Perl 6, has suffered from constantly changing specs, engines, etc) is incredibly insulting to all those who are working to make Perl 6 a reality.
Parent
Scripting language performance (Score:3, Interesting)
I hear a lot about Ruby performance - specifically, "Ruby/Rails can't scale". The odd thing is that this is in the context of a web app, where the overhead of the interpreter opcode execution is dwarfed by the cost of going over a socket to pull data across a LAN from a database. Scaling a web app isn't about the language; it's about architecture, judicious SQL optimizations, and caching.
Oh, and if you're using rcov to measure your Rails app's code coverage, try this patch [blogs.com] to prevent rcov segfaults. It doesn't fix the root problem, but it's a start.
Glaring Omission: Groovy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Glaring Omission: Groovy (Score:5, Informative)
It was a conscious omission... or perhaps semi-conscious. Lynn and I thought that if we were going to revisit the topic we should look at the same languages we did before.
I do want to cover Groovy at CIO.com, honest. Just haven't had a good hook for it yet. I feel like there's an opportunity for "&number; programming languages your developers wish you'd let them use" aimed at CIOs and IT managers, with Groovy probably top on the list. But I don't know what else ought to be on the list, so I haven't done anything with this idea. Suggestions always welcome.—Esther
Parent
Re:Glaring Omission: Groovy (Score:4, Informative)
The original title was "State of the Scripting Universe Revisited." It was too long for the ./ subject line. And the CIO.com one had to be written for search engines as well as humans (for reasons that are probably obvious but annoying nonetheless).
Still, the article's deck does say that it's a follow-up. As you'll see elsewhere in this thread, I'm happy to write about Groovy et al.
Parent
Another Perspective on Dynamic Languages (Score:4, Insightful)
Script languages as glue (Score:5, Interesting)
This part from the old TFA cought my eye:
When reading this, I immediately thought of ARexx (and now also show my fondness of the Amiga and somewhat show my age, now git of my lawn!). The use of scripting languages as glue between different programs is somewhat forgotten these days I think. Also forgotten is the easy witch with you could embed ARexx, and how extremely easy it was to interface with programs using ARexx.
I think these aspects could be better developed.
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
Language | Turing Complete?
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | yes
Python | yes
Ruby | yes
Javascript | yes
Parent
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
Language | Has a "p" in it's name
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | no
Python | yes
Ruby | no
Javascript | yes
Parent
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:4, Funny)
Tcl and Ruby have a p in their name, but the p is silent... as in swimming.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Javascript | yes
Are you really sure?
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Informative)
Note: I only know PHP and Ruby.
Learn javascript. It's by far the most valuable language on that list if you already know PHP and IMHO, the most fun regardless.
Pros:
Cons:
Parent
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
PHP | Annoying fanbois
Perl | Annoying fanbois
Tcl | No fanbois
Python | Annoying fanbois
Ruby | Annoying fanbois
Javascript | Annoying fanbois
* | rand()%2?"Annoying fanbois":"No fanbois"
Actually, I think one can draw more useful conclusions about fanbois than languages. How about something more concete.
Advantages:
PHP | It's not perl, tcl python, ruby or Javascript
Perl| It's not PHP, Tcl, Python, Ruby or Javascript
Tcl | It's not PHP, perl, Python, Ruby or Javascript
Python| It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Ruby or Javascript
Ruby| It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Python or Javascript
Javascript | It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Python or Ruby
Funnily enough the disadvantages are *exactly* the same.
Parent
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Insightful)
You would be asking for a flame war to list which is which but each has proven itself in it's own community. Usually, age, adoption, libraries and (mature)user applications is what makes the language mature and get better. Find those and you will find a decent language.
Parent
Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
TCL is very strongly typed. Everythin is a string. That's a 100% unbreakable typesystem :-)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
my ($i,$j) = (1,2);
print $i + $j; # = 3
print $i . $j; # = 12
If you your string concatenation operator is distinct from your addition operator, it's simple to tell whether you are dealing with a string or a number from context. Plus it lets you do neat stuff like:
my $filename = 'file0000';
$filename++; # = file0001
Why write more code than you have to? Unnecessary complexity makes your code harder to write, harder to maintain, and harder to understand.
Re:future of perl? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorta. Was it Sinclair who announced how great their next computers would be, to the point that no one would buy their current offerings? I think Perl's going down that route, and the longer it takes, the fewer programmers there will be to try it when it comes available. I'm not a Perl hater by any means, but I jumped ship for Python a long time ago. I think most Perl hackers have done the same, or picked up Ruby. Perl 6 always sounded interesting, but not so much that I'd put up with Perl 5 until it was ready.
Parent
Osborne (Score:5, Informative)
You're recalling the Osborne Effect [wikipedia.org]. I sure hope that doesn't befall Perl.
Parent
Re:Osborne (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not understand all that stuff surrounding Perl 6.
Perl 5 is near perfect: it does many things very efficiently, especially in coding effort department.
Perl 6 is different beast. Perl 6 is a standard. Whatever implements standard can be called Perl 6. There are several implementations underway (mostly complete by now) but they are pretty much unknown to masses due to huge popularity of Perl 5.
All this talks about Perl death remind me the talks about assembler programming death. My groupmate told me that in University about decade ago. Since then, like a curse, I have to deal with assembler regularly. Not that I have anything against it. But it bothers me that some people when see something new, fancy and shiny and quickly declare everything else old, uncool and boring.
P.S. And, btw, ask the .Net crowd about scripting languages. M$ already brainwashed them. Will you see, C# is not scripting, CLR is not interpreter. Scripts sucks because they sucks and C# is better. Scripting languages are dead. End of topic. Move on.
Parent
Scripting on .NET (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S. And, btw, ask the .Net crowd about scripting languages. M$ already brainwashed them. Will you see, C# is not scripting, CLR is not interpreter. Scripts sucks because they sucks and C# is better. Scripting languages are dead. End of topic. Move on.
Really? Is that what the culture's like? I am not really a part of that so I don't know... My impression was that .NET had a lot to offer for users of Unix scripting languages - really good interaction with other languages and applications' scripting interfaces, good bindings to system facilities, and the ability to take advantage of the CLR for just-in-time compilation...
Re:Osborne (Score:4, Interesting)
Perl 5 is near perfect: it does many things very efficiently, especially in coding effort department.
As a former Perl hacker who's been converted to Ruby, I must politely disagree. Perl5 is nowhere near perfect.
Perl 6 is a standard. Whatever implements standard can be called Perl 6.
Since that's "nothing", so far, it's pretty much vaporware.
CLR is not interpreter.
Again, in short: Yes, CLR is an interpreter. At least, it's every bit as much an interpreter as Perl is -- and every bit as much an interpreter as the JVM is.
There's another important difference: I can run Ruby and Python on .NET, and on the JVM. I can't run them on Parrot, which was supposed to be the one scripting VM to rule them all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ruby's going through its own somewhat painful transition right now, what with 1.8.7 and 1.9. Hopefully that'll work itself out fairly soon, though.
Re:future of perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ruby's going through its own somewhat painful transition right now, what with 1.8.7 and 1.9. Hopefully that'll work itself out fairly soon, though.
The difference is, 1.8.6 doesn't suck. Most of the difference is that 1.8.6 is slower, due to being on a slower VM. Most of what breaks (now, anyway) in the transition to 1.9 are various native extensions.
However, Perl5 does suck, compared to Ruby or Python. Perl6 looks very, very good -- but is nowhere near ready.
I could reasonably expect to pick up Ruby 1.8.6 (or 1.8.7), and have most of my existing code and coding style still work in 1.9. Or I could pick up 1.9, and backport some features to 1.8.6 (which is what 1.8.7 is, mostly).
I don't think I could reasonably expect to pick up Perl5, and know anything at all about Perl6. The best I could hope for is that most of my old code would still work in Ponie, which is Perl5 on the Perl6 engine -- implying that yes, they are completely different languages.
Parent
Re:future of perl? (Score:5, Insightful)
but I jumped ship for Python a long time ago. I think most Perl hackers have done the same, or picked up Ruby.
I really don't get it. I know Perl inside and outside. Last year I learned Python, and currently I'm reading a book on Ruby. But that doesn't make me forget Perl, so why not use it when it fits the problem being solved. Additional languages are new tools to add to your toolbox, but they don't remove your old tools. Why stick with one language when you can use all of them as you see fit?
Parent
Re:future of perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
I did so because Python is a complete superset of Perl for me. Anything I'd previously wanted to do in Perl, I can more easily do in Python. I guess that I can't think of a problem where Perl would be the best solution anymore.
Parent
Re:future of perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that I can't think of a problem where Perl would be the best solution anymore.
Any task that involves iterating over a bunch of lines, applying pattern matching to them. Perl is well optimized for this, and handles it substantially better than python. Although it's worth considering whether either sed or awk might be better -- they often are.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pffft, Perl is perfectly good for anything that needs string manipulation and such.
Unfortunately for Perl, so is Python. [xkcd.com]
(Well, and Ruby. I'm partial to Ruby, but there's no XKCD for me to link to.)
Re:future of perl? (Score:5, Informative)
Perl is a language for getting work done in. Plain and simple. It's not as cool and trendy as Python or Ruby, but it is more mature and IMHO more productive.
The "write only" complaint of Perl is easily addressed by adhering to some basic coding standards and (gasp!) commenting your code. A little self-discipline goes a long way.
I work with 4 other Perl programmers. Because we all follow a simple set of coding standards and design patterns, no one has any problems understanding anyone else's code.
Parent
Re:future of perl? (Score:4, Informative)
Can Perl 6 access Perl 5 modules while in Perl 6 mode?
Yes [programmersheaven.com], Perl 6 will be able to use Perl 5 packages.
Parent