[sf-perl] Stack Overflow Blog: "Why Perl is still relevant in 2022"

Sat Jul 9 01:46:29 PDT 2022

hi,

On Sat, 9 Jul 2022 00:54:45 -0700
Sean Dodger Cannon <el.dodgero at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 8 July 2022, Shlomi Fish <shlomif at shlomifish.org> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Mr. Dodger!  
> 
> 
> Hi Ms. or Mr. Schlomi!
> 

it is "Mr." and "Shlomi" - https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/ 
.

> Moose and Moo are not that bad, IMO, do not have a prohibitive overhead, and
> > make writing Perl OOP code easier and cleaner:
> >
> > https://perl-begin.org/topics/object-oriented/  
> 
> 
> Uh, Ms. or Mr. Fish: I *know about them*. Nothing in my message indicated I
> was in any way unfamiliar with them.
> 
> But in my opinion, they *don’t* make writing perl OO code easier and
> cleaner. They make writing perl OO code stupider and arbitrarily restrict
> it. And my Perl *was clean in the first place* because I’m anal about
> keeping it readable. I don’t golf.
> 
> Isn’t it at all conceivable to you (or anyone else drinking the moose
> “modern perl” flavor-aid) that there are people out here who know perfectly
> well what it is and just *don’t like it*?
> 
> Not liking it doesn’t mean we don’t understand it or don’t know what it is.
> 
> It just means we aren’t buying in to all this Moo* crap.
> 
> OOP predates java and Moose is very different from java's OOP:
> >  
> 
> It was an obvious figure of speech. I was making fun of (^Moo(se)?). Again,
> I don’t need a condescending link to tell me what I already know about
> something I already assessed and decided is useless, wasteful crap.
> 
> I don’t like it, I’m not going to like it, I don’t use it, I’m not going to
> use it, and I’m very unhappy that you moose lodge zealots have convinced
> all the pointy-haired managers that those of us who roll our eyes at that
> rubbish are somehow less talented or capable because it makes it harder to
> get jobs when a random shibboleth has been added for no reason. It was a
> dick move on y’all’s part.
> 
> Quite honestly, I think that if you or anyone actually NEEDS Moo/Moose to
> “make writing Perl OOP code easier and cleaner”, that if you actually
> thought Perl OO programming was *at all* hard and somehow needed that
> simplified for you, and that if you can’t write clean, readable,
> self-documenting code without a moose holding your hand, then maybe it’s
> not *me* who should be looked down on as the inferior programmer. Y’know?
>

Moo provides enough hooks to write dirtier code if needed. And there's also the
stoic method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L4qauTiCY4 .

> 
> > Honestly, while I still love and use Perl 5, I also like Python 3 a lot:
> >
> > * https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/thought_you_were_a_Perl_guy.xhtml
> >
> > Python is very easy to learn, and some people were able to tweak py code
> > just
> > by opening an existing codebase in a text editor.
> >  
> 
> From what I’ve seen, yes, python is very easy to learn for people who
> *don’t already know how to program*.
> 
> It is *not* one of the easier languages to transition to for a developer
> already fluent in any pascal-descendant language. It honestly comes off
> like someone described the idea of a programming language to someone who
> had never used one but was clever enough to come up with one from the
> description. Kudos to that, sure, but trying to learn it when fluent in a
> curly-brace language is like trying to learn Japanese when fluent in a
> Romance language.
> 
> Is Japanese sensible? Sure. Is it strict? Absolutely. Is it efficient?
> Totally. Is it precise? Way more than English for sure. Is it anything like
> a Romance language? Not by leagues and fathoms.
> 
> A perl programmer can pick up java, javascript, C, C++, C#, Objective C,
> and numerous other languages descended from pascal easily.
> 
> But to jump from this paradigm to something completely weird like Python is
> actually harder than just learning Python in the first place from scratch.
> 
> Just for instance, the thing that we call a “string literal” is, in Python,
> referred to as a “constant”. In Perl and other C/Pascal related languages,
> if constants exist at all the term means an immutable variable. A variable
> that can only by changed by re-assigning it (effectively overloading it).
> It cannot be changed “in place”.
> 
> Python doesn’t see this as anything special because that’s *all variables*.
> *Every* variable in Python is what Perl thinks of as a constant. Nothing
> can be changed in place and the assignment operator is the only way to
> alter that which is inside a variable (though at least you can go inside
> the assorted structs, you’re still using assignment).
> 
> So, in effect, they differ down to the level of actually disagreeing on
> what the definitions of the words “constant” and “variable” are. I don’t
> know if you can get more fundamentally different than that.
> 
> Another factor is that there aren’t really tutorials or classes for python
> that aren’t remedial for an advanced programmer of anything else. Throw in
> that “we can’t even agree what constant means” problem and you have a
> perfect storm recipe for disaster in trying to transition.
> 
> A newbie will actually benefit from chapter upon chapter in O’Reilly’s
> Learning Python on “what is a variable” and “what can you do with a
> variable” and “what is a function” and so on. I’ve thumbed my way through
> that book and gotten halfway in before anything seemed actually
> instructional to an experienced programmer.
> 
> So the solution should be “ok skip it, go to the meat”—except the constant
> problem. I mean that “constant” problem. Just when you think things make
> sense, it’s all “uhh WTF?” and you realise there’s some basic core concept
> that’s just treated totally differently in Python but the details about
> that are buried in the prior 300 pages you just skipped and you don’t know
> where.
> 
> So what do you do? BS? Fake it ‘til you make it and slog through? Or go
> back and read a decent sized novel’s worth of tedious, boring, almost
> insultingly remedial crap just to try to get at the one bigger buried in
> there you need?
> 
> It would be like learning Icelandic and then realising you don’t know what
> “þ” means but having to dig through 200-300 pages on the alphabet you
> already know because you don’t know where that would go in the alphabet and
> it’s not in an alphabetical order you recognise anyway. You want to learn a
> language but you’re stuck because you don’t know 1 or 1 of the ABCs, even
> though you know the rest. Quite a þ in the side, truly.
> 
> Anyway, literally anyone who isn’t special needs can tweak python *or any
> other code at a higher level than assembly* just by opening an existing
> source code file in an editor, even if most people are afraid to do so. So
> of course that’s true.
> 

i dont really believe in "knowing BASIC / C / perl / Fortran / etc. cripples
your mind forever":

*
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/show.cgi?id=quora-learning-to-drum-at-65

*
https://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-cards-on-the-table-2019-2020/indiv-nodes/people-can-change.xhtml

* https://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html/

> That said, I already admitted I need to try to make myself fluent in the
> ophidian language. Because as much as it pisses me off, there is one thing
> Python can provide that Perl really just can’t anymore (especially me that
> people who need baby talk Moose garbage hand-holding have convinced
> everyone that people who *don’t* aren’t as good somehow):
> 
> An income
> 

good luck but note stand-up comedy here -
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Buffy/A-Few-Good-Slayers/indiv-nodes/prospects-of-fighting-the-pseudo-vampires.xhtml

> —
> Dodger
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
My Aphorisms - https://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html

I don’t believe in Astrology, because I’m a Taurus, and Tauri never believe in
Astrology.           — Source unknown

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