Perl's Extreme Makeover

PurdueGraphicsMan writes "There's an article over at Yahoo! about the upcoming version of Perl (version 6) and some of the new features (RFC list). From the article: "Although Perl 5's expressions are the most sophisticated available and aspired to by other programming languages, "no one pretends for a moment that they're anything but hideously ugly," said Damian Conway, a core Perl developer and associate professor at Monash University in Australia.""

Whew, backasswards compat-with Perl 5

[microbob]

Good! Looks like they kept Perl5 in mind and it will flip into a special mode to execute older Perl5 code.

Nice!

-mb

Perl: The Beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

a ,There's been
a 0 an explosion
a /|\ at the ASCII
a | factory!!!!
a /|

Perl Haikus

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, about 99% of the Perl Haikus will not apply anymore.

quick question....

[thepyre]

"no one pretends for a moment that they're anything but hideously ugly," Does he mean the lines of code or the programmers themselves?

18 months away...

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmm...thanks for sharing?

What everyone knows about perl

[HappyCitizen]

Unreadable code,
Why would anyone use it?
Learn a better way.

ugliness that grows
into beauty inside of
your favorite shell

Arbitrarily
Nested structures for data;
Joy of birds in flight.

As with the spring rain
Perl is indispensable
Unquestionable

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Perl/Haiku/Abou tP erl

Who would have thought!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

"hideously ugly" and "Perl" in the same paragraph? Who would have thought!

Slashdotted. Here's the text

[Bingo Foo]

Since the article is slashdotted, I have reprinted the text below:

$_

Re:quick question....

[gUmbi]

Yes.

A picture worth 1000 words

[Nugget]

This pic says it all [bewilders.us]

Re:Hmmm

[__past__]

it's possible to write OpenOffice macros in Perl (Though it probably takes some nasty hacked API to do it)

A nasty hacked API like, say, Perl, you mean?

Parrot embedded in a message thread

[AubieTurtle]

(perl[6] == "Great") || die;

No, Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby? I think you mean Python. Python has all of the power of Ruby with a much much larger developer base.

And if you can't get past "the whitespace" thing in Python, then that's too bad; be an Ruby-using elitist.

Now, without further ado:

Python! -- Tastes Great!
Ruby! -- Less Filling!
Python! -- Tastes Great!
Ruby! -- Less Filling!
Python! -- Tastes Great!
Ruby! -- Less Filling!
Java! -- Job Security!
...

Ugly code

[mr100percent]

Neo: Do you always look at it heavily encrypted?
Cypher: Oh that's not encryption... It's a new Perl script I'm working on...

The Matrix Bastardization [detonate.net].

Re:Hmmm

[Bingo Foo]

It's easy really: since the OO macro language is Turing complete, you just write a perl interpreter in OO macros.

Re:No, Python

[perlchimp]

Java! -- Job Security!

I am the lead developer on a 200K line commercial bioinformatics program written in Perl. That's job security.

Re:Expressions ..

[Goaway]

So does a man standing next to, you holding a gun to your head, saying "INDENT THOSE BLOCKS!".

Re:Ruby...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is like arguing that Duluth is New York's equal because they both have buildings.

Perl brought this on itself

[Artifakt]

If Perl user's hadn't created the annual Obfuscated Perl contests, people wouldn't say such mean things about how the code looks ... Uh, no wait, isn't there one of those for C too? Well, if Perl had come along after the flaws in C++ were arround long enough to become really apparent, like Python ... Whaddya mean, it did? Uh, If Perl was distinguishable from line noise, people wouldn't say ugly, so there!

QE4PG

[Anonymous Coward]

Extreme makeover, nah.

Qeere Eye for the Perl Guy.

Perl....

[silverhalide]

...is the duct tape of the internet.

Perl: A write only program language

[xtronics]

It is better to startover than to try and modify a perl script.

Re:Ugly code

[panck]

Hmm, that suggests another programming language to join the ranks of brainfuck etc: the Matrix language.

every line of your code contains 80 non-whitespace characters, most of which do nothing and are just there to look cool when streamed vertically in neon green against a black background. This way, when you scroll through your code, you're in the Matrxi!! Awesome!

The only functional characters in the program are unicode glyphs that you can't find on a normal keyboard, everything else is treated as whitespace -- or rather, Matrix-space -- and actual whitespace characters don't exist, since in the future they have no need of them.

Re:Slashdotted. Here's the text

[McCow]

I can see what everyone is complaining about. Even jokes about Perl are hard to read.

Re:Slashdotted. Here's the text

[The Ape With No Name]

use English; #DAMNIT!

Quote-mania

[OblongPlatypus]

CmdrTaco wrote: "PurdueGraphicsMan writes "There's an article over at Yahoo! about the upcoming version of Perl (version 6) and some of the new features (RFC list). From the article: "Although Perl 5's expressions are the most sophisticated available and aspired to by other programming languages, "no one pretends for a moment that they're anything but hideously ugly," said Damian Conway, a core Perl developer and associate professor at Monash University in Australia."""

Four levels of quotes; fun...

Re:quick question....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fair to say perl is the deadbeat dad (as in got drunk fucked a bar slut and haven't seen her since) for python, php, and ruby.

I don't know what other modern scripting languages you use.

Re:No, Python

[The Ape With No Name]

If that sucker can output it's own code and send and e-mail too then, AND ONLY THEN, is it a true perl program.

Re:Expressions ..

[Bingo Foo]

Whereas I look at my Perl code for about an hour and a half thinking, "Ummmmmmm, what the fuck is this supposed to mean?

Which is why you use comments like this:

s/(.*?\s+)\(.*?\)/$1/g # PC LOAD LETTER

Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5

[Tablizer]

The simple fact is that you can write clean looking code... or ugly code. Perl doesn't care. It is your code... do it the way you want.... Perl's strength is that it let's a programmer program the way they want to. That is also it's weakness.

There are languages that would be fun if ONLY YOU yourself do all the writing, but the potential for abuse and bizzar variation is so great that I don't want to make a paid specialty in them, fearing that someday I will inherit spehgetti-and-sand-in-a-blender hell.

Thus, I divide languages into "paycheck" languages and "fun" (or "hobby") languages. Reminds me of an old army story told by who knows. The sarge overheard one guy calling his rifle a "gun", which is a no-no at this base. So he forced the soldier to run around the compound naked holding his rifle in his right hand and his dick in his left, and he had to repeat, "This is my rifle, and this is my gun. One is for shooting, and the other for fun".

Attention:

[Anonymous Coward]

a <O I AM NOT
a ( \ DEAD.
a X I was just resting.
a 8===D

Debian

[OverlordQ]

*whew* Since I'm running Debian Stable I wont have to worry about learning Perl 6, till Perl 7 is ready to hit the shelves.

Re:Perl: The Beginning

[mrogers]

now, you can look at the code and have a pretty good idea what it's doing.

With the greatest respect, I think you're missing the point of Perl. If you can understand your code, the Indian programmer who replaces you can understand it.

Re:quick question....

[mrogers]

Journalist: Bob, you've gotta help me! My article about Perl 6 is due in an hour. WTF is Perl?
Bob: Uh... it's an internet programming language. The webmaster's always talking about it.
Journalist: Great - I'll put "critical in the initial construction of the internet". When was it invented?
Bob: I dunno. It's pretty old though, it still uses ASCII.
Journalist: Don't get technical with me, I'm on a deadline. So what do you know about the new version?
Bob: I heard it's going to be a completely new language. The expressions are all going to be regular now, and the grammar's going to be regular.
Journalist (typing): Hmm... I could put in something about Latin... Perl as the lingua franca of the Internet... nah, don't want to go over their heads. OK, gotta go. Thanks for your help, Bob.
Bob: No problem man, just don't quote me.

Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5

[Ritontor]

s/\salot\s/a\slot/gi;