This discussion has almost died, so let’s increase the ante…
I think the solution is much easier. Against perl.
Perl 5.x won’t shake the world anymore. It can continue to exist for 100
years but its impact will shrink and shrink. This is inevitable. Only a
few perl hardcore fans refuse to accept this.
Maybe they should read http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ daily. I do
so and it is very rare to see ANYTHING of relevance come up in regard to
perl.
(Maybe someone has a graph, but I think I read more lisp references
there, than perl references)
I am not saying there aren’t any new great apps in perl. I still see
complicated solutions implemented in C and perl in bioinformatics for
example. I am sure there are countless more areas, so perl will not
become irrelevant SOON. It will be a long and slow death as gradually
people will ditch it in favour for another language (probably only ruby
and python to choose from, i dont think php alone can “replace” perl,
but what one has to understand with php is that it lowered the entry
barrier for new, younger coders. Being a “noob” is no problem, because
they have DECADES of years in the life left to LEARN more.)
It is thus moot to discuss about features in perl or solutions in perl
that are “better”. Ruby’s syntax beats perl’s syntax easily (with eyes
closed). Ruby’s OOP approach beats perl anytime. I think in fact I could
say that matz designed ruby to beat perl easily.
And perl is already lying on the ground right now … no sense to jump
on it further.
Perl 6 might be different as far as the “new” factor will be concerned,
at least I know (or read) of people who are interested in it. I am sure
the hordes of C hackers that like perl (there are many of them) will
jump onto perl 6 bandwagon. Maybe perl 6 will generate a lot of interest
and will manage to hold its promises. Up today one can not download perl
6 AND use it easily (like perl 5.x) though, so this sounds like
vaporware until it becomes a reality.
Knowing that perl 5 won’t make a large difference anymore due to the
pressure of php, python and ruby against it (on the “scripting language”
environment), I believe perl borders on becoming irrelevant as time
passes by.
The strongest faction of perl users, in my opinion, are the old C
hackers who are too lazy to switch to python or ruby, and don’t do any
(or much) web development either. (I know a few that even write their
blog stuff in C … )
They will be quick to point out mistakes in any other language, but
refuse to acknowledge bigger problems in perl largely. And who can blame
them? If a tool works, it is totally fine to continue using it. Without
php, ruby and python, I think perl might be still extremely popular. But
pitted against these languages, perl showed it’s 1980- age.
Comparing perl only to php might make perl a winner for most of everyday
task PHP in contrast to Perl but throwing python and ruby into the pool where
people can choose from, will make it very very hard for anyone to pick
up on perl first.
(And besides, if perl’s www focus would have been very strong, maybe we
would never have seen the rise of php.)
In fact why should anyone stop using Perl? And will people?
This is a question only perl can answer and I think the ruby mailing
list is not the proper place to discuss what perl needs to do.
For me, ruby beats perl hands down. I am not even writing that much ruby
code actually… It is much nicer to think in domain specific languages
(or instructions, if one wants to say so), keeping the data in
human-readable files, and have no real limit on where to use it
specifically, be it www, GUI, console app or whatever. (People might
come up with the speed issue, but speed is so overrated for everyday
tasks …)
The only complaint I can have about ruby is that the documentation could
always be improved. The Pickaxe is great, but I think a language should
have at least a great online and up-to-date reference, similar to php,
on the official site.
