Why is Perl losing ground?

[Tore Aursand]

No he did not. Read it again and look for the string CGI. It's not there
is it - you made that bit up.

Look at what he wrote, ok? He compares PHP/mod_php with Perl. He leaves
out mod_perl, which assumes that we're left with Perl in an ordinary CGI
environment.

Again read what he has said, the 'in a shared hosting environment' is a
caveat on the use of mod_perl. Not a declaration that he does not trust
mod_perl.

Well. For me, mod_perl has never been a problem in a "shared hosting
environment". mod_perl has never been a problem no matter what.


--
Tore Aursand <[email protected]>
"Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should
contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences,
for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines
and a machine no unnecessary parts." -- William Strunk Jr.

 

[Sara]

As a programmer who is addicted to Perl, I am curious as to why Perl is
losing ground to another bunch of languages, namely: Python, PHP and
Ruby. I'd like to hear your opinions. Is Perl just not "trendy" anymore?
Does it still scare programmers who haven't used it? Or do the other
languages have any major advantages over Perl? I haven't worked in these
other languages, so I'm not qualified to have much of an opinion here.
What do you think?

- Dom

It HAD to happen sooner or later. Look at every programming language
ever . Each has an effective lifecycle. Who uses FORTRAN now? COBOL?
even c? Perl will look pretty much like COBOL in 20 years.

I haven't seen any convincing stats that Perl is declining "yet", but
it's only a matter of time if it isn't. Unless it's some *miracle"
language.

WRT your specifics, I'd say offhand that PHP is in about the same
lifecycle point as Perl since they have similar audiences and
pedigrees. Python is climbing, as is Ruby although I see resistance to
Ruby in the USA since its percieved as an "offshore tool". At least
that's a comment I hear when I propose it.

Incidentally, programmers, particularly those early in their careers,
this is exactly why you can't learn "a language or two" and expect
them to serve your needs for a whole career. You always have to be
looking at "what's next". Wise Perl programmers would be looking and
maybe even starting to use Python and Ruby now. I've been an industry
developer now for over 20 years, and if a language serves my
employer's needs for 5 years thats a long life!

 

[Walter Roberson]

:It HAD to happen sooner or later. Look at every programming language
:ever . Each has an effective lifecycle. Who uses FORTRAN now? COBOL?
:even c? Perl will look pretty much like COBOL in 20 years.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4147164/
MIT Technology Review
10 technologies that refuse to die (Feb 4, 2004)

The last one on the list is Fortran.


:I've been an industry
:developer now for over 20 years, and if a language serves my
:employer's needs for 5 years thats a long life!

It must be nice to be able to rewrite all those programs every 5
years.

 

[L D Jones]

It HAD to happen sooner or later. Look at every programming language
ever . Each has an effective lifecycle. Who uses FORTRAN now? COBOL?
even c? Perl will look pretty much like COBOL in 20 years.

About 4 years ago I read an article (can't remember where) that said
most new systems are still done in COBOL today. My memory may be faulty
(which is certainly true) but COBOL is far from dead. Who uses C? Are
you kidding?

LD-Not a COBOL programmer

 

[Brad Baxter]

As a programmer who is addicted to Perl, I am curious as to why Perl is
losing ground to another bunch of languages, namely: Python, PHP and
Ruby. I'd like to hear your opinions. Is Perl just not "trendy" anymore?
Does it still scare programmers who haven't used it? Or do the other
languages have any major advantages over Perl? I haven't worked in these
other languages, so I'm not qualified to have much of an opinion here.
What do you think?

Why do cats paint?

What bothers me about questions like this, and ensuing discussions (in
many cases), is the assumption that the original assumption is true.

Is Perl "losing ground"? Are there reasonably good studies that show
this? Can you cite them so we can look at them, too?

I'm not expressing a opinion one way or the other about Perl, just about
the merits of (sometimes implied) claims, if they're based solely on
anecdotal evidence.

My US$0.02,

Brad

 

[John W. Kennedy]

Who uses FORTRAN now?

Actually, FORTRAN still sees a lot of use in its specific problem domain.

--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

It HAD to happen sooner or later.

Petitio principii. I don't see any agreement that it's happened yet.

If it means that Perl4 is losing ground, then I'm all for it. It's
taken far too long - and in the CGI field, where I happen to be
interested in Perl, it's incurred far too many risks, quite
unnecessarily, given the protections which are available in current
Perl if one has the sense to use them.

Who uses FORTRAN now?

Just along the corridor from me! But anyway, "Physicists write
FORTRAN in any language" - remark heard at CERN some years ago, but
there's a grain of truth in it yet. It's not so long since I was
shown some Java code that looked like it had been roughly translated
from FORTRAN.

COBOL?

I hear that COBOL programmers could command almost any fee, in the run
up to Y2K. Not sure how that went since, though.

all the best (still nostalgic for BCPL, though.)

 

[Matija Papec]

X-Ftn-To: Sara

It HAD to happen sooner or later. Look at every programming language
ever . Each has an effective lifecycle. Who uses FORTRAN now? COBOL?
even c? Perl will look pretty much like COBOL in 20 years.

Are you aware that C isn't replaceable when it comes to platform
portability? Can you name three operating systems which are relevant in
today use and are not written in C? I think one should take more input
factors when considering such generalizations.

 

[fishfry]

As a programmer who is addicted to Perl, I am curious as to why Perl is
losing ground to another bunch of languages, namely: Python, PHP and
Ruby. I'd like to hear your opinions. Is Perl just not "trendy" anymore?
Does it still scare programmers who haven't used it? Or do the other
languages have any major advantages over Perl? I haven't worked in these
other languages, so I'm not qualified to have much of an opinion here.
What do you think?

Perl was originally a simple scripting and programming language. In the
past several years these factors have contributed to its impending
decline:

* Increasingly bizarre and arcane syntax features

* Refusal of developers to produce a language standard

* Emphasis on new features over consistency and stability

* Many original language features becoming deprecated, leading to code
that stops running.

 

[Ben Morrow]

Are you aware that C isn't replaceable when it comes to platform
portability? Can you name three operating systems which are relevant in
today use and are not written in C? I think one should take more input
factors when considering such generalizations.

Most of the newer bits of Windows are written in C++.
Most of OSX is written in ObjC.
I don't know what OS/390 is written in, but I'd be surprised if it's
C.

Ben

 

[Chris Mattern]

Most of the newer bits of Windows are written in C++.

But large parts of it are written in C.

Most of OSX is written in ObjC.

OSX's window manager/GUI is written in ObjC, but the base operating
system is FreeBSD, and it's written in C.

I don't know what OS/390 is written in, but I'd be surprised if it's
C.

I'm not sure myself, but OS/390's predecessors were written in
assembler, with extremely heavy use of layered macros. OS/390
(aren't they calling it zOS now? Or have the marketroids
already moved on to the next trendy name? Call it what you
will, it's still MVS) is probably the same, at least in its
basic routines. Whatever isn't assembler probably *is* in C,
though. This isn't a case of C being superseded, this is a
case of the OS being older than C...

Chris Mattern

 

[Matija Papec]

X-Ftn-To: Ben Morrow

Most of the newer bits of Windows are written in C++.
Most of OSX is written in ObjC.
I don't know what OS/390 is written in, but I'd be surprised if it's
C.

Strictly speaking C and C++ are not the same beasts but that is pretty
irrelevant in above context.

 

[Tassilo v. Parseval]

Also sprach Sara:

It HAD to happen sooner or later. Look at every programming language
ever . Each has an effective lifecycle. Who uses FORTRAN now? COBOL?
even c? Perl will look pretty much like COBOL in 20 years.

I haven't seen any convincing stats that Perl is declining "yet", but
it's only a matter of time if it isn't. Unless it's some *miracle"
language.

Surely there must be some language that takes Perl's place then, no?
I don't yet see which one that would be. Ruby is often mentioned but
when being honest, it isn't so very different from Perl. At least it's
not a radically different approach to programming which I would expect
the new future language to offer.

I rather predict that all the major languages nowadays - C++, Perl,
Ruby, Python, Java and maybe more - will still be around years from now.
As time flies by, these languages do not rest but also evolve. I suspect
that Perl6, once out, will be fresh enough to survive another ten years
with ease.

As for those allegedly dead languages you mentioned: FORTRAN is
certainly still widely used, and rightly so. With the increase in
computational power of computers though its market might shrink a
little. But I am sure people said that already fifteen years ago and
were proven wrong.

C is out of the question anyway. With its vast support for almost every
conceivable platform, it must be the most portable language of all. That
means people will continue using it for writing operating systems,
compilers and interpreters for other languages. Eventually it could
be replaced by C++, but this is not going to happen before it is more
widely supported.

The real change will happen when a completely new system of computers is
invented (think Quantum Computers as a placeholder for such a system).
But this would mean the death of not just Perl but any language as we
know them right now.

Tassilo

 

[thumb_42]

As a programmer who is addicted to Perl, I am curious as to why Perl is
losing ground to another bunch of languages, namely: Python, PHP and
Ruby. I'd like to hear your opinions. Is Perl just not "trendy" anymore?
Does it still scare programmers who haven't used it? Or do the other
languages have any major advantages over Perl? I haven't worked in these
other languages, so I'm not qualified to have much of an opinion here.
What do you think?

This is an interesting thread.

For _me_ I find perl to be horrible when it comes to large scale stuff. It's
alright if you're the only developer, but if 2 or more people need to work
on it, then it's kind of tough. Java is more "corporate friendly" perl is
seen as more "script kiddie" stuff to some. (hey, I'm trying to be objective
here, I *do* actually like perl)

For the web, I used to like perl, I think all of us have written our own
template engines at some point. (I've written a few..) but perl falls apart
when it comes to big-ticket web stuff because you have to load it each time
OR involve yourself with a bunch of 'AUTOLOAD' code OR use mod_perl which
crashes and burns if there are a lot of modules and such, and anyhow, most
ISP's won't give you mod_perl anyway.

PHP fills this nicely. One thing I can't understand is why the PHP folks are
trying to design PHP to write stuff like graphical interfaces or command
utilities. If they just kept PHP a simple, web-oriented language it'd be
great.

PHP (when I last used it, they may have changed since then..) falls
on it's a** when it comes to exception handling, though. I don't trust PHP
to complex databases that have lots of relations that need updating. The
proliferation of mysql + PHP has some how made a lot of people oblivious to
the need of transaction handling.

They'll find out when the customer gets billed, but the code craps out
before the database was able to insert the customers shipping address..

Perl + DBI + eval { .... }; handles this problem rather nicely. (as does
java and it's try {} stuff)

Java is really seen more as a profesional language. It's not very fun to
program in, takes 5X more time to do the same thing in perl, but it enforces
a lot of strict rules, so you're less likely to shoot yourself in the foot.

Something about corporations that says "Creativity is a bad thing" java
fills this "strictly no creative processes allowed" void nicely. Perl's
probably loosing ground to java because managers want to make sure their
employees aren't having any fun. (the resourceful perl coder can get around
java's lack of creative abilities by making extensive use of the reflection
API, but Shhhh don't tell Mr. BigWig. )

As for Python or Ruby, has that really taken a bite out of perl?

Jamie

 

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Well. For me, mod_perl has never been a problem in a "shared hosting
environment". mod_perl has never been a problem no matter what.

Look around at how many cheap virtual hosting companies allow
mod_perl, however. And if they say they do, try to find out exactly
how much they let you do in your .htaccess to actually get any use out
of it. And, reading about mod_perl configuration issues (I do use
mod_perl on *my own* server), it looks like there really isn't that
much isolation between the clients. So I can see why virtual hosting
often comes without mod_perl.

mod_php, however, seems to be plenty safe, and very widely supported,
for virtual hosting.

 

[Walter Roberson]

:For _me_ I find perl to be horrible when it comes to large scale stuff. It's
:alright if you're the only developer, but if 2 or more people need to work
n it, then it's kind of tough. Java is more "corporate friendly" perl is
:seen as more "script kiddie" stuff to some.

One of our programming teams decided to scrap several person-years
worth of Java code -- it was too inflexible at how it handled
array slices, resulting in too much data copying [they are using
fair sized datasets so it really adds up for them.] They've decided
to go pure C++ except perhaps for a graphics toolkit.

perl would not be my first choice for performance... but then
neither would C++.

 

[Tore Aursand]

Look around at how many cheap virtual hosting companies allow mod_perl,
however.

That's not a problem that has to do with Perl, the programming language,
compared to PHP (or any other language).

This is the _choice_ of many hosting companies. I have almost never come
upon companies that doesn't install mod_perl if you ask them to.

And if they say they do, try to find out exactly how much they let you
do in your .htaccess to actually get any use out of it.

Your .htaccess file is your .htaccess file. You should consider changing
to another hosting company if they monitor your changes in the .htaccess
file and/or limit what you can do with it.

And, reading about mod_perl configuration issues (I do use mod_perl on
*my own* server), it looks like there really isn't that much isolation
between the clients. So I can see why virtual hosting often comes
without mod_perl.

I really don't understand this argument: What do you actually mean with
"isolation between clients"?

I have never had problems with my mod_perl application, and I've been
fiddling around with them for more than 4 years.

The only thing close to "client sharing" I can thing of is shared memory,
and that is without doubt a good thing.

 

[John M. Gamble]

Well, mostly. I trust mod_perl just fine, so long as I'm the only
user.

Are there any real-world examples documenting mod_perl problems?
You've mentioned the concerns of sites that you've worked on, but
if they're just repeating something that they've heard, it may be
just something that's become urban legend.

 

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Are there any real-world examples documenting mod_perl problems?
You've mentioned the concerns of sites that you've worked on, but
if they're just repeating something that they've heard, it may be
just something that's become urban legend.

As I recall, it's based on warnings in the mod_perl documentation.

 

[Bart Lateur]

I really don't understand this argument: What do you actually mean with
"isolation between clients"?

It means that if you mess things up in one client's setup, it'll affect
everybody.

mod_perl is global, across virtual hosts. It's a major drawback, also
making it unsafe to experiment on a server where a live site is running.