Larry Wall Talks Perl, Culture, and Community 123
LostDiver writes "Computerworld Australia caught up recently with Larry Wall of Patch and Perl fame. He talks about the development of Perl as 'scratching an itch,' a release date for Perl 6 (Christmas day, year unknown) and beauty versus practicality. Computerworld also has some more information on the upcoming Perl 6. A while back they interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame as well."
jamie pointed out a interesting, related video of a presentation by Clay Shirky from last year's Supernova conference in which he discusses why the Perl community (or any web community) drives progress and innovation.
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Actually, it doesn't matter. In a world where millions of people are providing software for hundreds of millions of other people, being a niche player is perfectly viable.
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It depends on what you call a niche. "People looking for an improved Perl" is arguably a niche. I'm not trying to quibble, I see what you are saying, that the current Perl community is looking elsewhere (or entrenching on 5).
I guess I was trying to point out that the base community will probably be big enough to sustain Perl 6, so the size relative to other communities isn't something to be concerned about (which is somewhat different than being concerned that the community won't be big enough to provide X)
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these guys aren't working on the same timeframe that the rest of us are
Good point. Personally, I'm limited to the length of a human lifespan, but at the pace they're going, they must think they're immortal. More evidence of Larry's arrogance ;-)
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Actually, Parrot (the VM) will probably be released as 1.0 well before Perl 6. Rakudo, the official Perl 6 on Parrot implementation, can't really be ready for release until Parrot is anyway. There are a few other Perl 6 implementations in the works, the other most notable one being Pugs.
I've heard that 1.0 of Parrot will be out as early as spring of 2009. If that puts Rakudo out at Christmas 2009 or Christmas 2010, then I think that's a great specification, design, and development effort by such a small tea
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we are comparing programming languages by how fast their version numbers increase?
that is even worse than video game fanboys comparing stock quotes of Nintendo and Sony...
i remember when i would visit slashdot in 2001 (before the attacks and the new politics section which was an invitation to filth no nerd cared about) without being insulted by such retarded BS..
Re:Christmas? (Score:4, Interesting)
It appears within the system administration community that Ruby is well on its way to replacing Perl as the de facto language for major tools. Well over half of the new tools introduced at the LISA (Large Installation System Administration) conference this year were written in Ruby. I've been developing in Perl for about 15 years, but have recently switched nearly all of my development to Ruby. I know I'm tired of hearing about how great Perl 6 will be. I've been hearing that promise for half a decade now. The biggest drawback to Ruby right now is that the availability of 3rd party libraries is nowhere near the level of what's in CPAN.
Apple is also putting a significant amount of effort into improving and integrating Ruby with Mac OS X. MacRuby and HotCocoa both look really interesting, particularly if you want to develop GUI apps.
Re:Christmas? (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't see anything in the faq that says that modules will run untranslated in a perl6 program unless it is in perl5 compatibility mode, which would kind of make it pointless. Of course, you can translate the modules to perl6, but you can also port modules to python or ruby.
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I'm not sure how much of that applies to modules, though. Especially modules that rely on a native component. That FAQ leaves several questions unanswered:
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That would be because you're a fucking idiot and they answered that question so fucking long ago that no one with half a brain doesn't know the answer already.
Perl 6 Myths [openfoundry.org]
From that page in HUGE LETTERS:
Perl 6 can use CPAN modules.
There you go. Question answered. TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO.
Why your post got modded up I'll never know.
Re:Christmas? (Score:5, Informative)
All of it.
If you use a Perl 6 implementation which supports Perl 5, yes.
Yes, if they're pure-Perl.
No.
That depends on the Perl 6 implementation. The answer is probably no, but there's no reason someone couldn't write a converter for the basic XS uses.
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Modules have to be rewritten? No they won't. More like, abandoned as unnecessary. But still usable as is if you want. Many so-called modules are just wrappers for C libraries, where someone else has gone to all the pain of figuring out the XS. If I've understood it correctly, Perl 6 will be able to call library functions directly, without a lot of fuss. No more messing around with XS, or SWIG and the 100K extra verbose code it is wont to generate per function, or whatever, wondering if it's failing be
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Rakudo [rakudo.org] (Perl 6 on Parrot) can do this now.
Parrot (Score:3, Informative)
In addition to what the other /.ers have said, bear in mind that one of the main targets for Perl 6 to run on is Parrot a "one-VM to rule them all" multi language VM.
Thus, not only will the binding be accessible to Perl, they would be accessible to any other language targeting Parrot VM.
(Think of something remotely like JVM or Mono/.NET's CLR except that, unlike microsoft's CLR, Parrot is designed from the ground up with all the complexities of modern latest-gen dynamic languages in mind)
Where the things ge
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Well, its a diverse community, and there's probably at least one person in it interested in that, but the main interest, as far as anyone is looking at replacing the new-as-primary VM (YARV) used in Ruby 1.9 with anything else as the "main VM" for Ruby seems to be Rubinius (which even some of the YARV folks have said is the way of the future for Ruby), and aside from YARV and Rubinius, most o
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The most recent commit was less than a month ago. Rubinius (as one example) definitely has more work put into it, but Cardinal is not dead by any means.
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Yeah, though Ruby 1.9.1 is only getting a release candidate on Christmas, with the final release planned for January 25.
Re:Christmas? (Score:4, Interesting)
It appears within the system administration community that Ruby is well on its way to replacing Perl
Interesting observation but not what I'm seeing here in Silicon Valley. Perl is far less popular than in years past, but Ruby is not that popular among systems admins either. Instead Python is all the rage. I believe this is because Ruby is better suited to those who spend a majority of their time writing code whereas Python can be learned and used more easily without such frequent use. So sysadmins here, who don't spend the majority of their time writing code, are using mainly Python (and shell).
Not a statistic, just an observation across a dozen or so large and small Linux and Unix using organizations.
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I don't do much on the sysadmin side, but I too was under the impression that Python was the most popular language for writing tools with.
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Yup, python is more popular than ruby in the sysadmin arena in my area, too. I guess for the reasons that GP mentioned - it's easier to learn the basics and the syntax generally makes it harder to write stuff that you don't want to maintain later than that of Perl or Ruby.
Unscientific sample from my box here:
$ grep "/python" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
114
$ grep "/ruby" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
28
And from a fairly vanilla debian box:
$ grep "/python" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
34
$ grep "/ruby" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
17
Re:Christmas? (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting omission:
$ grep "/python" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
168
$ grep "/ruby" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
23
$ grep "/perl" /usr/bin/* | wc -l
570
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Well, I didn't bother to include Perl because everybody knows it's the 800 pound gorilla. 20 years of script hacking don't just go away, whereas python and ruby only started gaining traction in the last 5ish years.
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Ahh, the things I've hacked together with good old Perl - hacking Perl maybe unfashionable and considered unmaintainable by other - maybe even other Perl programmers.
But to a hacker who believes most generic code has been written, that only tailored code remains to be written, Perl will remain to glue and re-use other code with ease.
Replacing it is a fantasy by people who would like to re-invent the wheel with a different color-scheme annually.
Re-usable code ? modules are easy to write, easy to unders
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Obviously, one can code in OO perl if one wants, and it's actually useful for other things besides GUI... myself I just think of it as a scoping compromise between global variables and the pure-functional style.
But yeah, I tend to agree that the main drive that pushes some people to switch away from perl has more to do with snob appeal.
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Just for completeness...
(although I blame Gentoo for there being so many python scripts there)
Language popularity in my Debian server (Score:2)
Here are the results for my small Debian web/mail/dns/databse/etc server.
Not very readable :-), but Perl helped to show that it's quite popular indeed, ranking third after ELF executables and shell scripts.
$ find
$VAR1 = {
'setuid perl script' => 1,
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Perl6 has been the absolute worst thing that ever happened to Perl. All the drawbacks of vaporware, and none of the benefits. Everyone thinks Perl 5 is obsolescent because Perl 6 is supposedly coming out ...someday. Frankly, Larry and them should have announced they were developing a new language (say "Emerald"), and not trashed the Perl brand for so far, nothing.
Seems like I've said this a million times, but it seems like this has been going on for a thousand years.
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The next stable release of Rakudo [rakudo.org] (Perl 6 in Parrot) comes out next Tuesday. This will be the 24th stable monthly release of Perl 6 on Parrot in a row. You can also see daily Rakudo spectest progress [rakudo.de], if you like.
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Usually I hear this old saw from the same Pythonistas who seem to believe that Python 2.x is effectively dead now that P3K has been released.
I've been watching the development of Perl for a while now and I am certain that Perl5 isn't going anywhere any time soon, and it will continue to evolve and be developed for many years after Perl6 is finally released.
I recently tried making a bet with a Python hacker that we will probably see perl 5.14 before Python 2.9. He declined on grounds that we may *never* see
Grown up into what? (Score:2)
even PHP will be grown up with 5.3 and 6.0
But grown up into what? :)
5.3 is an interesting release. IMHO they've saved it from being yet another mundane bridge release that's a small step down the path to Java by paying attention to a lot of the excitement surrounding the other dynamic languages. But it's been clear for a while that Java was originally what they planned to grow up into with 6, and 5 being the bridge between it and 4, and the PHP community has always been by and large a bit... pedestrian... i
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"I was either onto something, or on something."
-Larry Wall
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More direct regex syntax
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Things you plan to write in under fifteen minutes are generally better done in Perl. Beyond that point, the verbosity and consistency of Python becomes a distinct advantage.
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Sounds a lot like Sequel, for Ruby.
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Use perl instead of python when you have a lot of necessary code/modules already written in perl instead of python. Unless you like spending time writing code when you don't have to.
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and that is why I write big programs in Perl... so that they don't have to be bigger.
Re:Why should I use Perl instead of Python? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Perl or Python?" is like "awk or sed?". They solve different problems. They're suited to different tasks. For the parts where they overlap, though, there are various arguments either way. There's a reason why there are flamewars about this stuff. You get flamewars when the arguments on both sides are evenly matched, and the choice therefore becomes a religious issue.
Perl has some advantages. It has anonymous functions that aren't crippled. It has predictable lexical scoping. It has (optional) variable declarations. It has more libraries, and a very convenient standard way of installing them. It's available on any Unix system, whereas Python programmers are frequently reduced to begging sysadmins to install their favourite language. (And sysadmins frequently prefer Perl...)
Perl also has disadvantages: cryptic syntax, too much magic DWIM stuff, no standard way of doing OOP, etc. Note that these are all areas where Python is strong; if you care about consistency, Python is going to be a better choice for you personally.
Neither is a clear winner on performance; Perl is faster for some things, Python for others.
Re:Why should I use Perl instead of Python? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, "Perl or Python?" is more like "C++ or Java?" In other words, they are indeed different languages with different strengths, but the area of overlap is pretty damned large -- you can write programs that do the exact same thing in either language and it really won't make any difference to the end result. Since I switched over from Perl to Python ~6 years ago, I've never found a task for which I would have used Perl that I couldn't do in Python. I'm not saying that there aren't any such tasks, you understand, but I honestly don't think there are many of them.
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"Perl or Python?" is like "awk or sed?".
No, "Perl or Python?" is more like "C++ or Java?"
No. "Perl or Python?" is exactly like a battle between Smalltalk or MC680x0 machine code.
I think we'll have to conclude that "Perl or Python?" is really just like "Perl or Python?". :-)
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Huh? Lisp, qua Lisp, doesn't have standard looping facilities. Most practical Lisps, like Common Lisp and Scheme, tend to have much better standard looping facilities than C (Common Lisp has "l
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I maybe wrong, but could you do the perl -e one liners in Python? I use them quite often.. Not trying to flame, but curious.
No, not a flame at all. (It's sad that people snark about other people's choice of languages so often that your disclaimer was necessary.) Anyway, python -c is the equivalent to perl -e. The 'c' is a mnemonic for "command."
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no standard way of doing OOP
Really? I was under the impression that not only was there a standard way, but it was lifted from Python.
Re:Why should I use Perl instead of Python? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why should I use Perl instead of Python? (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides CPAN, Perl was one of the first languages to integrate advanced data structures - lists and hashes - directly into language itself. And not some half-assed implementation - e.g. C++'s STL or Lisp' lists - but really really good implementation, supported by many standard functions and (most importantly) internal optimizer.
Last, but not least, Perl is quite well performing. Compromise fitting most tasks: scripts are loaded relatively fast (e.g. compared to Python), yet if you use structures intelligently, it will run very fast.
All that together, with Perl's pragmatical approach, you have a tool which easily scales from irreplaceable "perl -pe" one-liners to relatively huge projects. And in many cases, huge projects start as one liner scripts. That's where I'm addicted to Perl: if you know what you do, you can write short but powerful scripts in few seconds. And if you need, you can easily improve the one liner into some good tool, usable by other too.
As noted by many Perl fans (like I am) you do not write in Perl - you think in Perl. It is language without any artificial barriers between you and resources you need to accomplish your task. That's why it is so hard to get off the Perl.
P.S. Can't compare to Ruby, since I haven't used it. Few examples I have seen before hadn't stroke me as anything radically new or more useful/practical than Perl.
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My take on Ruby (admittedly limited), is that it's Perl written in Reverse
Polish Notation. Instead of 'sort list', you do 'list.sort'.
If you'rea big fan of OO, Ruby is the tool for you. If you're dashing off
a quick hack to rearrange that text file, Perl is gonna be your tool of choice.
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Hehe...
And to think it would be 15+ years to the next language which would integrate standard data structures right into language is really a shame.
Most languages try to create "the language." Perl always wins by simple fact of being first and foremost "the tool," and only then "a language."
If with normal language, you spend some time learning syntax, with Perl you first learn to do some work by picking scripts on the Net. Then you try to combine the scripts - and find that it is possible indeed a
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If with normal language, you spend some time learning syntax, with Perl you first learn to do some work by picking scripts on the Net. Then you try to combine the scripts - and find that it is possible indeed and the abracadabra beneath is a neat programming language.
My biggest gripe with Perl is that after 'knowing' it for years, and using it here and there by picking small scripts off the net and writing my own 1-2 page scripts, I STILL find bits in these scripts that make me go WTF.
I might not understand every single syntactical element of C, C++, or Java, but I can usually figure it out from the context when I come across new ones. That is with very minimal exposure too. I suppose I might be taking for granted how similar the syntax of those three are, and my cumu
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The real language that has stolen my keyboard is PHP5. Even though it seems to unite all the negative features of Perl, embperl, Python, Java and C++, I'm still intrigued. It seems to be a language which cannot be written cleanly. It
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Besides CPAN, Perl was one of the first languages to integrate advanced data structures - lists and hashes - directly into language itself. And not some half-assed implementation - e.g. C++'s STL or Lisp' lists - but really really good implementation
Ugh. Perl deserves credit for recognizing the importance of built-in data structures, but auto-flattening lists and requiring explicit references to do nesting is insane.
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auto-flattening lists and requiring explicit references to do nesting is insane.
Care to elaborate where your problem is?
I in fact the auto-flattening a nice feature which allows for many silly and useful tricks (e.g. prepare list(s) with arguments to function, dynamically lookup function reference, call by references supplying the list)
Explicit references are pretty handy too. After all, normally you do not use references at all. For most of the things plain data structures (without nesting) are sufficient. And even then, if you have deep nested structure, by adding extra functi
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As noted by many Perl fans (like I am) you do not write in Perl - you think in Perl
I usually say something slightly different to people that I'm teaching perl: when writting perl, you think algorythm and data structure more than anything else, and that's what matters. You don't waste much of your time to fight with dumb API, stupid syntaxes or strange behaviors (php anyone). Perl is sometimes intimidating for outsiders, partly due to the way some people overuse its felxibility, but there is an easy way to w
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Is this a joke? Most Lisps have quite an impressive array of standard functions for dealing with Lisps, which are the languages primary data structure, including functions for usin
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Besides CPAN, Perl was one of the first languages to integrate advanced data structures - lists and hashes - directly into language itself.
Wow, the ignorance is remarkable. Learn a bit of history. Lisp had lists at the very beginning, and Smalltalk's collections put most high-level languages to shame, and that includes .NET and Java, which ostensibly have very extensive class libraries.
Of course, I suppose one could argue that, in Smalltalk, collections aren't in the "language itself"... but in Smalltalk,
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If you are a UNIX/Linux sysadmin, you may find that perl code looks more unix-like. Also, as a practical matter, perl is far more popular for unix sysadmin than python, so you are more likely to have to work with perl scripts.
These days, perl is essentially a requirement for unix sysadmin jobs - that is not true of python.
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Perl culture on public display (Score:3, Funny)
The quality and intelligence of graffiti is inversely proportional to the difficulty in putting it wherever it is. Dangerous spots on train lines? Misspelt tags. Quiet abandoned swimming pools? Computer scientists with spray cans. [today.com] Now, that's Perl in Popular Culture!
Holy typos, Batman! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Signals" for "sigils", describing ClearCase as a "rear-vision control system"... was this article dictated over a noisy phone line to someone who knows nothing about computers?
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Having used ClearCase*, I'm not sure that one's a typo.
* Mind you, it was a badly architected usage of ClearCase, and even the ClearCase folks told us at the time, "you're doing it wrong". Our company knew better of course, resulting in a lot of suck.
Good reasons for the delay (Score:5, Funny)
Some important changes had to be made to support the developers of Duke Nukem Forever, who are rewriting the project from scratch in Perl 6. The good news is that means Perl 6 is right around the corner!
Who needs Perl 6 when we have Perl 5? (Score:4, Insightful)
A talk on why Perl 5 is Alive [postgresqlconference.org] was given at PostgreSQL Conference West 08. What I found most interesting is how vibrant the current perl 5 community is. There are even non profits popping up to support it and forgo worrying about 6...
Re:Who needs Perl 6 when we have Perl 5? (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at the November 2008 TIOBE index top ten:
Position Position Programming Ratings Delta Nov
Nov 2008 Nov 2007 Language Nov 2008 2007
1 1 Java 20.299% -0.24%
2 2 C 15.276% +1.31%
3 4 C++ 10.357% +1.61%
4 3 (Visual) Basic 9.270% -0.96%
5 5 PHP 8.940% +0.25%
6 7 Python 5.140% +0.91%
7 8 C# 4.026% +0.11%
8 11 Delphi 4.006% +1.55%
9 6 Perl 3.876% -0.86%
10 10 JavaScript 2.925% 0.00%
You can read the rest of the article [perl.org] here...
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TIOBE isn't serious research. Counting "Chrome" for Delphi may skew the numbers, given that Google's browser is not written in Delphi.
Look at actual available jobs! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:perl is irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
It's also two keystrokes shorter. What's wrong about borrowing good ideas from other languages? (I'd tell you what's wrong about borrowing bad ideas from other languages, but you didn't ask.)
You're also years out of date on the string concatenation operator. I leave it as an exercise for readers to form their own conclusions about the accuracy of the rest of your post.
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I agree with you about the gp; but a while ago I noticed a lot of comments in the CPAN modules which started talking about the perl "way of doing things" rather than just nicking things wholesale from other languages. If they have started the latter again, then Perl 6 will be the better for it.
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Most languages do borrow from other languages. There is nothing wrong with seeing something good and implementing it. Keeping something bad just to be original is silly.
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Maybe I should just continue on with OO programming and pick up where I left off and stick with interpreted languages and then onto OOP, instead of functional programming.
I would think that some functional programming would be useful though. I am guessing if you are familiar with OO and functional it would make you a bit more marketable. Just a hunch.
If Ruby, Pyt
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Making career decisions based on Slashdot discussions is insane. You might as well go ask the guys huffing glue in back of the gas station. Fewer people around here actually have paying jobs in the field than would like to present themselves as having such.
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I would think that some functional programming would be useful though.
I have a better idea. Learn Smalltalk. That way, you can learn more about both functional programming and proper object-oriented software design. The simple reality is that Ruby, Python, Java, and C# all borrow heavily from Smalltalk (PHP is more of a successor to Perl), so learning Smalltalk will give you a leg up on almost any modern, object-oriented language.
That said, learning a bit about Lisp or Scheme is always a good idea (Lisp'
Perl (Score:3, Insightful)
Perls sense of Community vs C++'s anti-community (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a C++head and I've a friend who is a Perlhead. One thing I really envy about Perl is the sense of community; you get the feeling they're all in it together, and CSPAN gives them a massive library of contributor functions. Stuff I have to write in C+++, he can just reach into CSPAN and find a module, well documented, all ready to go.
Now compare that with C++. We've finally got BOOST.ORG which is supposed to be C++'s answer to CSPAN, but its too little too late. Well, maybe not too little, but it's tiny. There's just too much function it doesn't have. So what can you do? If you need some function you can google around to find a library someone else has done, but since C++ never dictated things like geometry or template libraries (STL was an unpopular pig at first, so many codeshops rolled their own instead). Everything is different. The standard of documentation for open libraries isn't great; you're lucky if you get any doc at all, and usually you'll have a few poorly strung together test programs you need to reverse engineer. Despite POSIX, portability is still a problem. Microsoft C++ doesn't like GNU C++, and this affects packages which you wouldn't think would have any OS dependent code at all (e.g. NOVA).
But worst of all, what C/C++ code there is out there was smithed in the days of "I will get rich off this hundred line program ha ha royalty holidays forever". Nearly everything has a non-commercial clause. Even the most piddling things or everyday stuff like triangulation. Where does that leave you? Well you can get a payware library like Alan Murthra's Polygon Clipper library for which he charges a whopping $2K a license. Prices most of us out of the market (an educational, no-profit exemption is useless). ie. GTFO. So in C++, almost always, you'll find yourself rolling your own code. And when people roll libraries, they're seldom open-sourced. There are a few honourable exceptions; LIBPNG, LIBJPEG, LIBZIP, FFTW. But these are few and far between.
I truly envy Perl. I'd like to blame the C++ Community for not doing an equivalent of CSPAN sooner, but there is no community to blame. I welcome Boost, but it has such a long way to go. Really what C++ misses is community.
I know the Perl6 release date! -- leaked info (Score:1)
Re:Dropping regex as a core lang feature (Score:5, Informative)
Perl 6 promises to put the "regular" back into regular expression. "We have more powerful primitives in Perl 6," Wall said. "There's no more /x switch to enable extended syntax. No more mode switches like /s and "dot" (.) now means match any character. There's no /m modifier and we've regularised the brackets so {} always mean embedded code."
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who the fuck thought they would be dropping Regex in any way shape or form?
Re:Dropping regex as a core lang feature (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't drop regexes at all. They've actually generalized them into context-free grammars, and these CFGs are a core part of the language.
If anything, the problem with perl6 is they added way too much.
Re:Dropping regex as a core lang feature (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm that's interesting.
I know quite a lot of scientists who use Finite State Automata for tasks and use custom libraries for that. If Perl 6 can provide an easier and efficient way of doing that it might even have a future :-)
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I'm sure I glanced over something that said they were deprecating it and that while they would provide support they would have no future development and they were going to something else.
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I believe they're dropping one of their database connectors because another one's better. I'm still stuck in .NET 2.0 land where I am, so I'm not sure. (Not that I like LINQ to begin with. The one .NET feature I really dislike.)
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The version that brought LINQ was .NET 3.5, with C# 3.0. .NET 3.0 was just the Vista technologies ("WinFX": WF, CardSpace, WCF, WPF and arguably also WTF) and didn't affect any of the languages in any way - just a bunch of new namespaces. .NET 4.0 will deemphasize LINQ to SQL in favor of LINQ to Entities, which hooks LINQ up to Entity Framework, a more solid (but as of yet woefully "1.0") mapping framework on its own. As with everything Microsoft, it'll probably live on for ages.
LINQ to SQL is more of a joy
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Haiku only has three lines, and 17 syllables. To wit:
Perl does not matter
Pomo Larry became chaos
Academics... Yes!
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Burma shave.