[Chicago-talk] Chicago-talk Digest, Vol 185, Issue 4

Fri Apr 5 15:38:11 PDT 2024

This is interesting.

I have worked in probably a dozen or more languages in the last 40+ years.

Two things about Perl that the old heads will know:
Perl make hard things easy;
In Perl, there is more than one way to do it.

I’ve done ibm/mvs assembler, cobol, c, c++, Java, Perl, all sorts of rdbms
variants, etc. ruby, groovy, etc. and more.

So from an old head’s perspective:

I worked in Perl for about 25 years or more, until maybe 9 years ago.
Where I was working 9 years ago (I was there 10 years) I’d say 80% of our
processing was done in Perl.  This was mostly flat file processing, but I
also maintained our timesheet system, which was Perl/cgi.

Where I am now, we are in process of migrating all things to python ( from
SAS).  Been at it a year or more.  I’d say it will take two more years.

 I don’t want to say python sucks, because in my (humble?) opinion Java
sucks much worse, hands down.  BUT…

Python has proceeded to provide this processing environment that satisfies
a fashionable clientele: what we now call data science. Being focused on
that, it has become a sort of special purpose language while persuading
everyone that data science is the only thing that matters.

But python makes easy things hard. This has nothing to do with indentations
over brackets; it really has to do with the ‘pythonic’ approach to problem
solving in which the ‘pythonistas’ claim there really is one best solution
to any problem.  Check them out, you will see that mindset.

John Sances
54nc35 at gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/54nc35 <https://www.linkedin.com/in/54nc35>.

On Fri, Apr 5, 2024 at 3:32 PM <chicago-talk-request at pm.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: What's happening with Perl these days (Jay S)
>    2. Re: What's happening with Perl these days (Chris Hamilton)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 14:13:56 -0500
> From: Jay S <me at heyjay.com>
> To: "Chicago.pm chatter" <chicago-talk at pm.org>
> Subject: Re: [Chicago-talk] What's happening with Perl these days
> Message-ID:
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>
> maybe one day I'll try to learn Python.
> I always loved perl because it was so simple to do simple stuff quickly
> my understanding is that Python is more formal, and not a quick to rip off
> a quick script
>
> On Fri, Apr 5, 2024 at 10:36?AM Mike Fragassi <mikefrag at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This seems more or less correct. My Perl activity at work has become
> > strictly maintenance of existing applications, including adding minor
> > features. We've moved to Python for all new work. A lot of it comes down
> to
> > that it used to be that all the new hires had at least passing experience
> > with Perl; but now, it's Python instead. Slow attrition has left us with
> > just 2 people at all comfortable with Perl, and I'm the only "expert".
> >
> > Incidentally, I was helped *immensely* when my job, for a moment, was
> > willing to fund training; I jumped to take an in-person course from David
> > Beazley, a local who has written/co-written several Python books,
> including
> > O'Reilly's Python Cookbook. (His site is https://www.dabeaz.com/)
> >
> > Speaking for myself, the one thing that Python has, that makes me
> actually
> > angry with Perl for missing, is built-in Exceptions. I will defend Perl's
> > honor that it was not 'line noise' to anyone who tosses out that old
> line,
> > but I never ever ever want to deal with "$@" again.
> >
> > Perl 6 is now "Raku" since 2019, and it seems that existing under its own
> > "brand" is beneficial for both languages. It should have been done years
> > earlier.
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 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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> >>
> > _______________________________________________
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 15:31:31 -0500
> From: Chris Hamilton <cjhamil at gmail.com>
> To: "Chicago.pm chatter" <chicago-talk at pm.org>
> Subject: Re: [Chicago-talk] What's happening with Perl these days
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>
> As little more than a consumer of information on this list, I feel like I
> wanted to chime in for once in support of this view. I agree strongly with
> the notion that my role in a company is to take the business needs that
> company has and translate that into technology-driven deliverables that I
> believe best serve those business needs. Choosing the "best" tool for a job
> isn't always a purely objective decision, and there are often plenty of
> tools you can use to accomplish that same purpose. It is not the decision
> of people who consume the outputs of my work to determine for me mechanisms
> that drive those outputs. Their job is to sufficiently define the needs of
> the deliverable (often needing assistance to even do that well, in most
> cases), my job is to deliver on that. Part of that deliverable (as it
> should also be part of the underlying requirements) is for that solution to
> be reasonably maintainable and sufficiently long lasting (and only on this
> very small area might the choice of Perl vs. Non-Perl be a consideration,
> based solely upon available resources -- though even this common sentiment
> is something I don't particularly agree on).
>
> I love Perl. I'm unashamedly an advocate for Perl whenever the topic is
> discussed. I've been building large scale web applications in Perl for
> nearly 20 years. I've also been hearing how Perl is a "dead language" since
> the first time I was exposed to it on the job and was told the application
> I'd be working on was written in Perl. Strangely enough, I'm still building
> greenfield products in Perl to this day and will likely continue to do so
> until something massively changes that makes doing so a less optimal
> approach for me.
>
> Anytime this topic comes arises out and about with non-Perl folks (and even
> a lot of the time with Perl folks) I will continually hear more about why
> using Perl is a terrible choice these days (seemingly regardless of
> whenever "these days" are at the time). Meanwhile, every time I begin
> building something of even moderate complexity with something that *isn't
> *Perl
> I find myself facing situations that would have been so much more readily
> available to accomplish in Perl. For the sake of this discussion, I'm not
> even going to bother coming up with various anecdotal examples (because
> even if I did, that would carry no tangible weight in this argument, as
> they would be purely anecdotal and also possibly even the result of my own
> ignorance in a given specific scenario). The reality is this, from my
> perspective: Perl makes easy things easy to do, but more importantly it
> turns a lot of things that are seemingly *impossible *to do into things
> that can at least be accomplished.
>
> I can find plenty of things in Perl to complain about, but I can also find
> plenty of things about *any* language to complain about.
>
> Do I wish Perl 6 didn't exist (or at least had picked a different name at
> the outset)? Yes. I didn't ring that bell and we (seemingly) can't unring
> that bell. This will go down in history as one of the stupidest marketing
> blunders of all time, imo.
>
> Do I wish Perl was perfect? Sure, stupid question.
>
> Do I think Perl is better than any reasonably comparable language? Hell yes
> I do... and at the very least, it's certainly no worse than any of them.
>
> Python is *fine*. Perl is better.
>
> -Chris
>
> 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Chicago-talk mailing list
> >> Chicago-talk at pm.org
> >> https://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chicago-talk mailing list
> > Chicago-talk at pm.org
> > https://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk
> >
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