is perl obsolete?

G

gavino

do people only use it for legacy?

php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it
 
T

Tim Greer

gavino said:
do people only use it for legacy?

php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

Rather than listening to the hype of other languages or what people feel
about it, feel free to research it. Perl is very widely used, is
popular and will remain so. Other languages are fine to use as well
(it's your preference/choice and you can use more than one), but don't
let people's choices and opinions make you believe that a language they
don't like or use is somehow going to go away or makes it obsolete.
Perl isn't going anywhere.
 
X

xhoster

gavino said:
do people only use it for legacy?

No. I use it extensively for new projects.
php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

"Beyond" in what way? In my admittedly non-omniscient experience, people
who use Perl just quietly get the job done. People using some other
languages I can think of seem to spend more time blathering about their
language than actually using it. I'm sure some people whose favorite
language is <fill in the blank> will say the same thing with the labels
switched.

Xho

--
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the
payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked
advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate
this fact.
 
T

Ted Byers

do people only use it for legacy?
No. Our use is entirely new code (although we write a lot of code in
java, and soon C++) Our legacy code is Basic, soon to be completely
rewritten in C++.
php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

What do you mean "beyond it"?

We have used PHP, but I prefer perl for the kinds of things we do that
don't involve a GUI or a web interface, and Java/servlets/JSP/JSF for
web programming, with a little ASP written in perl on occasion. I
haven't seen enough of a payoff in PHP to warrant using it in
preference to anything else I use. Obviously each language exists
because it has something its designers felt was missing in the other
options, and each language's popularity is a reflection of how many
developers share the language designers' views.

It is not likely that there will ever be unanimous agreement on what
makes a language desirable. Some prefer BASIC because it is simple
(and built into just about all MS products), so simple one doesn't
need as much training for VB developers as one needs for a C++ or
Java developer (hence the market demand for them). But C++ and Java
developers would likely complain that VB is too simple, and that its
object model is broken. I have had experienced VB developers ask me
what an object model is after I had asked them to explain some aspect
of the VB object model, this after they have told me, correctly (if
you're willing to accept such a simple object model), that VB supports
object oriented programming.

But worrying about the popularity of a language strikes me as folly.
There was a time when people had to develop in binary machine code,
and later in assembly. Few people have those skills now, and for good
reason. But somebody must still do it in order to map the programming
languages we understand and use to something a machine can process.
The skill sets a compiler developer must have are different from what
an application developer needs.

Some might argue that fortran ought to be used only for legacy code,
because it has allegedly been superceded by languages like C/C++. I
would say not, though, since the fortran standard is continuing to
evolve, gaining support for new idioms touted by, e.g. those enamored
with object oriented programming. As old as it is, fortran remains
well designed for its problem domain (number crunching).

I would respectfully suggest that rather than describing any of these
languages as being beyond any of the others, it would be fairer to say
only that they're different. And I'd recommend you take a look at,
for example, James Colpien's book on multiparadigm development (yes, I
know that was written focussed on C++, but what is says is relevant
beyond C++ in terms of matching what is required by a problem domain
to what is supported by a given language). A man who has only a
hammer wiling likely treat all fasteners as nails, while one who has
only a screwdriver will likely only see fasteners as screws, but it
seems to me that a sensible workman will have a complete toolkit,
including hammers, screwdrivers, staplers, &c., and be included to
select the right tool for a given job, and probably more than one tool
when considering different aspects of a major project, if I may use
that metaphore to explain the essence of multiparadigm development.
And to take that one step further, different workmen need different
tools, just as an electrician would likely use screwdrivers, as he
rewires a house, that are different from the screwdrivers used by a
jeweller repairing watches.

Cheers,

Ted
 
T

Tim Greer

gavino wrote:

php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

Also, what do you mean by they all seem to be beyond it? There's
absolutely nothing those languages or frameworks can do that Perl can't
do just as well (and sometimes better), or in a framework, too. They
are newer, they are hyped more, is that what you mean? PHP and Ruby
are fine languages, nothing wrong with them. I use them as well as
Perl, but unless I have a specific request, I always code in Perl,
because those other languages have nothing on Perl that makes them
better. Perhaps you can clarify in what way you mean they are beyond
Perl?
 
J

Joost Diepenmaat

Tim Greer said:
gavino wrote:



Also, what do you mean by they all seem to be beyond it? There's
absolutely nothing those languages or frameworks can do that Perl can't
do just as well (and sometimes better), or in a framework, too. They
are newer, they are hyped more, is that what you mean? PHP and Ruby
are fine languages, nothing wrong with them. I use them as well as
Perl, but unless I have a specific request, I always code in Perl,
because those other languages have nothing on Perl that makes them
better. Perhaps you can clarify in what way you mean they are beyond
Perl?

Don't expect a decent answer from gavino. He just thinks up these inane
questions and then never replies in any meaningful manner.
 
T

Tim Greer

Joost said:
Don't expect a decent answer from gavino. He just thinks up these
inane questions and then never replies in any meaningful manner.

I see, I've not noticed him posting here before. I assume there's a
good chance it's an attempt to troll and get people riled up (about
other people's opinions, ironically). :)
 
J

Joost Diepenmaat

Tim Greer said:
I see, I've not noticed him posting here before. I assume there's a
good chance it's an attempt to troll and get people riled up (about
other people's opinions, ironically). :)

He's a regular poster on comp.lang.lisp (where most people are of the
opinion he's never written a single line of lisp), but a quick google
groups search turns up posts on comp.lang.forth, c.l.tcl, c.l.haskell,
c.l.python, and on the third page, a post called "democrats are
communists" in alt.politics.
 
C

Charlton Wilbur

TG> I see, I've not noticed him posting here before.

He goes from programming language group to programming language group,
asking inane questions. I suspect that he just got soundly flamed in
comp.lang.somethingorother and decided to focus on fresh meat.

He's a masterful troll - it's very easy to believe that he's just really
naive and curious. Unfortunately, he's been naive and curious for the
past three years at least, and he never seems to learn anything from the
threads he spawns.

Charlton
 
C

cartercc

do people only use it for legacy?

php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

Let's see ...

COBOL, circa 1950s - I have a friend who manages a dozen or so COBOL
programmers and complains because he has to personally train new hires
to write COBOL.

FORTRAN, circa 1950s - I have a friend who is a university senior
majoring in aerospace engineering and is taking FORTRAN as a program
requirement.

LISP, circa 1950s - There have been a glut of new books on LISP and
some recent articles that suggest that LISP will come into its own
with multi core processors.

C, circa 1970s - Still used for Linux, Unix, and Windows kernel
hacking.

Ada, circa 1970s - Where I work, we continually get job announcements
looking for Ada programmers, mostly from the armed services and
defense contractors.

Perl, circa 1980s - I use Perl on a daily basis in my job as a
database manager. I've experimented with several languages, and have
concluded (based on comparisons made among languages) that Perl is
optimal because of its string handling and RE facilities.

No, Perl isn't obsolete, not even close. It's not all prettied up like
C#, J#, F#, or the other brand new languages, but it has the collected
wisdom of the ages (relatively speaking) in CPAN. All things
considered, I'd much rather have my fat, ugly, old woman, who cleans
my house, cooks my meals, washes my clothes, and satisfies me in every
way than some tart in lipstick, rouge, a push-up bra and a mini-mini
skirt who'll leave me high and dry in my time of need.

CC.
 
J

Joost Diepenmaat

cartercc said:
LISP, circa 1950s - There have been a glut of new books on LISP and
some recent articles that suggest that LISP will come into its own
with multi core processors.

If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at clojure. Looks like a strong
contender for the next "new lisp" - especially with its focus on
concurrency.
 
P

Peter J. Holzer

Also, what do you mean by they all seem to be beyond it? There's
absolutely nothing those languages or frameworks can do that Perl can't
do just as well (and sometimes better), or in a framework, too. They
are newer, they are hyped more, is that what you mean?

Erlang appeared in 1987, the same year as Perl 1. There's a good chance
that Erlang is actually a few months older than Perl. Haskell appeared
in 1990, so it's a bit younger than Perl, but not exactly new, either.

Also, I'm not sure there is much hype about them. Oh, there is some talk
about a renaissance of functional programming languages, but I think
that will remain just talk. These languages are very
different from "mainstream" object oriented imperative[1] languages like
C++, Java, Python or Perl, which will probably keep the number of
programmers (and the numbers of programs written in these languages)
small, because a) many programmers don't grasp the concepts (ok, many
programmers don't grasp OO either, so that may not be a problem) and
b) managers are afraid of using a language which only a few
highly-skilled programmers have mastered, no matter how productive they
are.
PHP and Ruby are fine languages, nothing wrong with them.

PHP and Ruby are indeed quite a bit younger than Perl and both were
written by authors who knew Perl and consciously borrowed some features
from Perl and rejected others.

hp
 
T

Tim Greer

Peter said:
Erlang appeared in 1987, the same year as Perl 1. There's a good
chance that Erlang is actually a few months older than Perl. Haskell
appeared in 1990, so it's a bit younger than Perl, but not exactly
new, either.

Pardon, I was speaking of Ruby and PHP when speaking of when they came
about. Indeed, PHP was originally just a method to get Perl code
embedded in HTML web pages, or something along those lines.

Overall, language war trolls usually don't get far anyway, since I don't
see many people in the Perl group caring if someone wants to use
something else if they want to.

I know I don't care, but I'm happy to report to the OP that Perl isn't
in danger of going away or being obsolete. I'll be retired before that
happens, and I'm not very old. :)
 
C

corky

gavino said:
do people only use it for legacy?

php ruby haskell erlang all seem to be beyond it

Popularity is a weird issue here. I do not know where every unix distro is
on this, but perl is standard on most and PHP is probably not. Have you ever
tried to get the sysadmins at a large company to install something on a
production(or even test) box at the whim of a programmer?
Perl is tested, popular and most of all, it is there when you need it.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
474,212
Messages
2,571,101
Members
47,695
Latest member
KayleneBee

Latest Threads

Top