[pm-h] Perl 7?

[G. Wade Johnson]

On Wed, 6 Feb 2013 11:05:56 -0600
"B. Estrade" <estrabd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Mark Allen <mrallen1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > This conversational topic comes up from time to time and it really
> > is a bikeshed.
> >
> > It's going to take more than a new version number to get (most)
> > people (re-)interested in Perl in a major way.
> >
> > That's my NSHO.
> 
> This is a good recent interview with Damian Conway.
> 
> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/conway-perl
> 
> He compares Perl to the air we breath, you don't notice it much
> because it's all around you. I tend to agree.

I like that.

> Regarding the lack of interest in Perl, I've come to the conclusion
> that if you come from a traditional *nix POV, Perl is inevitable in
> your progression from writing shell scripts.  Some move on, but I
> gather many do not - and why would you?  My point is that it might
> have more to do with a decline (or lack of noise from) true
> *nixphiles.  You might jump to Ruby due to Puppet if you're managing
> largish infrastructure; I am not sure how one would fall into Python
> from this path, but I am sure there are ways.
> 
> People who poo-poo Perl 5 typically are typically paradigm
> (OOP/functional/DSL) zealots and language snobs. I think it gets lost
> on them the originating purpose and goals of Perl.

Despite the somewhat inflammatory terminology, I partly agree with you.
I know 15 years ago, it seemed that every book I saw on Java had an
obligatory "bash other languages, but especially Perl" chapter. In a
way, it was inevitable. Back then, Perl was the language to beat in the
non-compiled space. Almost everyone felt the need to show why they were
better than the established language.

> In the video Conway makes another good point that nearly all languages
> do most things well or good enough. This is an indication that

Since all general purpose languages are Turing-Complete, there is
nothing that one can do that cannot be done in all. The differences are
more in syntax, culture, and what the language makes easy.

> programming languages and environments are pretty close to being a
> "finished" technology (sort of like cars, radios, tvs, refrigerators,
> etc).  The point of me bringing this up is to say that I think at this
> point in the game, people are making language decisions on the same
> kinds of reasons that they choose to drive one car over the other.

I think you are right. In a lot of ways, you could argue that
programmers pick a language because of the way it looks and who are the
people using it.

Unfortunately, programmers seem to try to convince themselves that they
are making these kinds of decisions (programming language, editor,
brace style) for logical, rational reasons.

I wrote about this almost two years ago
(http://anomaly.org/wade/blog/2011/03/programmer_beliefs.html).

Shrug,
G. Wade
-- 
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the land of Redmond, where the Windows lie.