[pm-h] Perl 7?

[B. Estrade]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:39 PM, G. Wade Johnson <gwadej at anomaly.org> wrote:
> 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.

I meant no offense. Perl was more or less a toehold for me during a
part of my life spent lost in the blue sky of academia. Without it, I
might have lost my marbles big time.

The video of the roundtable at HOPL III with Larry Wall as a panelist
is pretty interesting. He's surrounded by some pretty heavy hitting
academics who have a dog in the paradigm space.  It's behind a
paywall, but if you have ACM access, it is really worth a watch
(really just to see how awkward it is as points).

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1238844

>
>> 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.

Yeah, and they get into arguments and angry over it. Clearly an
indication that something irrational is happening.

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

Nice article.

Thank you,
Brett

>
> 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.
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