[Chicago-talk] What's happening with Perl these days

[Sean Blanton]

Yeah, Perl is a thinking person's tool, which turns a lot of people off.
Perl and Python are still like 95% identical from 50,000 ft up from the
user's perspective. The strictness of Python helps less capable programmers
a bit but the rise of Python can also be attributed to people wanting to
get on the latest greatest trend as well...  Go was trendy after Python,
but it's not going to unseat Python. Go has its place as something a bit
better than Java for production and commercial applications. Docker,
Influxdb, Grafana, all the Hashicorp tools - they are all written in Go.

A couple of annoying things about Python; users are continually confused by
immutable objects, which is a common cause for production issues I find,
and Python dispenses with a super important best practice which is in the
namespace of public modules. Perl wasn't great, but it tracked C++ at
least. Java and Go nailed it for the internet age, where you use the
reverse TLDN as the namespace ~like
com.google.<division>.<project>.<module>, so  People name Python modules
whatever the heck is the very first thing they think of and at least one
popular package manager may preferentially pull something from the internet
with the same name. There's ways around that.

Ironically, I joined DRW 5 months ago, who used to host the Perl UG
meetings in downtown Chicago at 540 W Madison. Even funnier: they acquired
the company I was working for, Chopper, when I was attending the PUG's, but
they didn't acquire me. I had some adventures at other places and now I'm
working with the same people I used to work with at Chopper. They still
have Perl in production but safe to say Python is the big cheese.

Regards,
Sean

Sean Blanton
sean at blanton.com


On Fri, Apr 5, 2024 at 11:17 AM J L <joel.limardo at forwardphase.com> wrote:

> "I'm only lightly technical these days, having moved into a sales role a
> decade ago. I haven't really done any programming for years."
>
> Here's my two cents:  If the entities you serve do not want Perl who
> cares? What do YOU want? When I work with a company they give me an
> assignment-- give us X. How I model X, support X until I hand it over to
> their own internal support department, etc. is *my* business. How I handle
> contact management (Perl), documentation (wiki written in Perl), and even
> software testing (system I wrote in Perl) is MY business. They get the
> cake; I keep the pan, spoons, cling wrap, and the ovens. Now I can make
> more cakes elsewhere. I can even give them away.
>
> Perl's strength is that it gives you an actual tool to help you think for
> yourself. You don't need a company to tell you what software problems to
> think about. Just as the writer *must* write the programmer *must* program.
> To the devil with what companies want and what some nondescript IT
> management fool is telling you. What do YOU want to do with the wonderful
> grey matter residing atop thine head? Solve problems, explore.
>
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2024, 9:56 PM Jay S <me at heyjay.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Perl Mongers,
>> I hope all is well.
>>
>> I'm only lightly technical these days, having moved into a sales role a
>> decade ago. I haven't really done any programming for years.
>>
>> It seems like Perl6 was too big an effort, leaderless, and sort of
>> fizzled out while Python ascended. Technical folks I sell to all have
>> Python people (and scala ruby Java(script)) - I never hear anyone mention
>> Perl.
>>
>> Is my perspective right, wrong?
>>
>> Jay
>>
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