Comment by Sukotto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sukotto | Hacker News Reader

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Perl used to be cool. It used to bring a lot of functionality and flexibility that you just couldn't get anywhere else.

But it's not unique anymore. And it no longer brings anything truly amazing to the table that you can't find in a competitor language.

I think perl will never really go away though it has clearly reached a long-halflife twilight phase [1]. Unless a miracle happens, it will never return to dominance in anything other than niche domains (like quick-n-dirty commandline scripts).

[1] http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl

* But what about perl 6, Larry Wall's ambitious project to basically rewrite perl from scratch?

For sure what he's doing is interesting. But he's unlikely to create anything so compelling that it will make people want to switch from the other languages taking over perl market share. It's the Netscape re-write all over again. Except perl 6 will have to compete with a number of other fabulous open source languages not a single corporate one.

Perl 6 seems more like an academic research project than a real language.

* But perl 5.x is incorporating all the best stuff from perl 6. And we even have simple OO now!

Anything really worth having from perl6 is also going to get pulled into python, ruby, and hell, even lua ... and all of those languages have better traction and forward momentum than perl 5.

* But people use perl for important stuff!

I'm sure they do and they will continue to do so. Hell, iirc, perl's even used by some cool websites like duckduckgo... but that doesn't mean that perl isn't in decline. It doesn't mean that it's popular. It doesn't mean that a lot of people are going to start using it.

--

I feel sad. Perl's been a big part of my career for over 10 years. It's been my go-to language for over 15. I wish I didn't feel like it's slowly dying.

"But it's not unique anymore. And it no longer brings anything truly amazing to the table that you can't find in a competitor language."

Name another multi-paradigm language with as broad, deep and well-tested library as CPAN.

"Unless a miracle happens, it will never return to dominance in anything other than niche domains (like quick-n-dirty commandline scripts)."

When has "dominance" (whatever that means) or popularity ever been the goal or desirable? I can't think of any language or system that is universally "dominant"; all have niches to work.

You don't get into programming because you want to do what all the cool kids are doing. Paul Graham (you might have heard of him, you're using his site) argued very well on the advantages of choosing above-average tools for above-average results. (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

Having dealt with CPAN, I'll take python and pip _any day_. CPAN is practically the definition of dependency hell. For developers it may be good (I don't write Perl, so I dunno), but for end users it's a real clusterfrak.

The only dependency hell I've had installing modules in my 14 years of programming with dynamic languages was trying to get 2 different Rails apps to work out of the same gems...

Ruby, my other favorite language besides Perl, is just as vulnerable to dependency problems as... every other language!

Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, they all have lots of packages and modules that depend on each other. So do many Linux distributions. Dependency hell is not language nor domain specific.

After all these years, one of the reasons I stick with Perl and CPAN is precisely because I can monitor and anticipate dependency problems with CPAN Testers. MetaCPAN has nice impact analysis tools too. I'm yet to find something comparable in any other language ecosystem. Hell, you can't even specify a minimum version of a module to import in Python, like in Perl's "use Module 2.3".

Honestly, i'm fairly sure he just plain doesn't know that "dependency hell" means "can't install stuff because of conflicting or circular dependencies"; but thinks that the term means "well them sure are a lof of deps, yup".

That's a strong claim. Exactly what qualified it as "dependency hell" for you. What problems did you run into?

Like depending on 20 other modules, 4 of which fail to build with the current version. Lots of bitrot.

If i am understanding you right, you are talking about modules being abandoned and not working with a newer perl version you installed?

In that case that is most certainly not dependency hell, since no amount of dependency gyrations could fix it. The module is flat out broken on that version. Perl does however give you all the information you need to figure out on which versions of Perl the given modules work via:

http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=IO-Socket-SSL-1.49

or

http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/I/IO-Socket-SSL.html#IO-So...

Armed with that knowledge you can then use Perlbrew to install that version and be on your way.

If i misunderstood, please feel free to correct me.

I don't quite understand that whenever a Perl post comes on HN there is always a need to comment about its relevance or how it compares to x, y & z :(

Perl is just a tool and people use that tool for a myriad of reasons. Whether its in decline or even worrying about it being in decline doesn't give me a good reason to stop using it on a daily basis :)

BTW... the article (and its meme) is really about Google search and this will/does/could affect all programming language (over time!).

re: Google Trends

You may find this trend interesting: http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl+programming%2C+ruby+prog...

Remember all Google Trends is showing is the history of what people searched for. There are external factors which affect these results over time. For eg. The internet is no longer the domain of just techie programmer types :)

> Google Trends

Sorry to say bud, but you need to understand your statistical tools before you try to use them. That graph shows the comparison to THE ENTIRE INTERNET, as far as Google sees it. It does not show a graph of the absolute number of searches.

Want to know what Perl is losing out to?

Porn: http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn&ctab=0&geo=all&#...

> Anything really worth having from perl6 is also going to get pulled into python, ruby, and hell, even lua

Yeah? Tell me when any of those get proper Roles that can measure up to Moose::Role. :)

I'm okay with Perl decreasing in popularity. It's okay for a thing to serve its purpose and then bow out.

It doesn't need to bow out - it can continue to serve its purpose while existing next to other useful languages, even if some strengths and weaknesses may overlap.

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