

Perl 5 Is Dying - zvikara
http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/38010?from=rss

======
staunch
I still use Perl to this day because of Catalyst + DBIx::Class + CPAN. I can
feel like I can do basically any web development task at least as elegantly,
cleanly, and quickly as I could with Ruby or Python. Because of CPAN I think
Perl probably wins more often than not on the speed aspect. I also tend to
have a lot of backend stuff that runs as daemons/cronjobs, etc. Perl is really
great for that stuff.

Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in. But they're
just passing by each other headed the opposite direction right now. The stigma
Perl has just makes it seem worse than it is objectively.

Today Perl 5 is still a very reasonable choice IMHO. I'll switch to Ruby or
Python full-time at some point. If Perl 6 ends up being better at some point
I'll switch to that. We used to have to choose between C++ and Java and Perl.
Perl was so much nicer. Now we have to choose between three languages that are
all heaven by comparison. I don't really care which "wins" because I will no
matter what.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
> Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in

Tossing aside this obviously flawed TIOBE thingy (Delphi, wtf?) I see no
evidence of this. CPAN contributions are accelerating, not flat-lining. Perl's
domination over Python and Ruby in the corporate environment continues.

~~~
staunch
I think you have to be deluding yourself to not recognize this as true. Of
course Perl is _very_ far from dead, but the early adopters and influential
people are moving away. Don't forget that C++/Java had the corporate
environments back when Perl kicked their asses.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
All you seem to be saying is you _FEEL_ Perl is losing some sort of race.

I don't share that feeling and I don't see any hard evidence of it. By all
reasonable metrics perl continues to grow.

~~~
icey
This only works when you pick and choose which metrics to count.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
You're welcome to do the picking.

~~~
staunch
How about total attendance count for all conferences between Python/Ruby/Perl.
If Perl was still kicking ass on that (it has historically had some of the
best conferences) I'd be surprised.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's probably a good measure. YAPC::NA this year was the biggest ever, I
seem to recall hearing (and I definitely remember there were more women there
this year than ever before...it was commented on during the closing address as
being a great milestone for the Perl community). But, YAPC is still a pretty
small conference, by design, and there are multiple YAPCs each year, in places
all over the world, with the goal being to be friendly to independent
volunteer hackers rather than huge corporations.

------
petercooper
Some utterly ridiculous FUD about Ruby in there. I can't make Java scale.. but
that's not because it can't - just because I don't know Java well at all.

If you're not already good at something, _of course_ it's easy to say
something else doesn't work or isn't any good.

~~~
staunch
It seems like each language only gets to have a one-liner description in
everyone's head. Ruby is "can't scale". Perl is "line noise". Python is
"clean, but boring" (or something), Java is "verbose and corporate", C++ is
"overly complex", Lisp is "for kooks", etc, etc...

~~~
silentbicycle
In other words, the way programming languages are marketed matters.

~~~
michaelneale
And fashion, lets not forget the fashion. What's this seasons colour?

~~~
silentbicycle
I'm not just being glib. The computer industry is _extraordinarily_ buzzword-
driven.

For a good summary, watch Steve Yegge's presentation, "How to Ignore Marketing
and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps". (<http://blip.tv/file/319044/>)

~~~
michaelneale
neither am I - and I totally agree. I just don't think its marketing - its
more fashion (I wouldn't really expect Steve to understand marketing, very few
do).

Marketing is often what developers brush off as "the other stuff" without
really understanding it.

~~~
silentbicycle
> Marketing is often what developers brush off as "the other stuff" without
> really understanding it.

Agreed. Trying to convince programmers to not write it off entirely (such as
in the presentation) is a step in the right direction.

FWIW, I think a few languages (Python, for one) have actually been marketed
reasonably well.

------
schtog
Good. Let Python take over the dynamic scripting language space completely.

~~~
d0mine
Let us not jump to conclusions:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+rub...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java,+c,+python,+perl,+ruby,+php&l=)

[http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKIL...](http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Details.d/Trends.d/SKILL/PYTHON.d/stats.20081202.1428.png)

~~~
sh1mmer
How many Perl jobs are turning into Cobol-esque jobs. Maintain a legacy
systems and keep it chugging along. How many people build new projects in
Perl?

~~~
d0mine
Agreed. Each metric has it flaws. Two differently biased metrics are better
than one.

------
greyman
I agree with one redditor who blames perl6 for this state. Indeed, who would
start a new project in perl5, when the language becomes obsolete by perl6, but
on the other side, you have to wait and wait again for perl6 to be actually
delivered.

I think they had to either deliver perl6 a few years ago, or not doing it at
all and continue to improve perl5. But in this situation, many people are just
not willing to invest into perl and are looking for the greener pastures.

------
Tichy
I can't take an article serious that lists Visual Basic and Delphi among the
top ten programming languages. Maybe they are still very common, but even if
they really are, they are definitely not common in the "world" that I am
interested in.

~~~
ars
So if the data doesn't match your expectations change it?

~~~
lacker
A more reasonable way of putting it would be, what would be really interesting
is a breakdown of the languages used by the last 100 successful internet
startups, where "successful" is whatever metric you feel like.

~~~
ars
It might be a better way of putting it, but it's not a useful question.

No language can be called "successful" if only 100 internet startups use it.
Look at languages that are used in the real world, and don't artificially
limit your selection process.

I might be OK with making the criteria: languages used for _new_ programs
(rather than languages in use for a useful product). I'm not sure what their
criteria is though.

------
jodrellblank
If you have to "reinvent the language _and_ the community", how does that
count as Perl 5 surviving?

------
sabat
And perl6 was DOA. Long live Ruby.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
Last I checked there are two different Perl 6 implementations on the home
stretch.

~~~
kragen
That race was over four years ago, though. Ruby won. It's nice that the old
nag is finally making it to the finish line, but the audience has been gone
for a long time.

~~~
SwellJoe
Actually, I don't know a lot of Perl developers who have switched to Ruby
(though many have tried it--it is, after all, a very comfortable fit for Perl
programmers, since it borrowed a lot of the best features of Perl). I know
several PHP guys who made the switch...but, there are numerous areas where
Ruby shows its immaturity and Perl is far more competent: Unicode, block
scope, VM performance, concurrency, library breadth and depth, just to name a
few.

I like Ruby and think it's a very fine language. I've implemented a couple of
small projects in Ruby, and had fun with it. I find it as readable and
writable as any language I've used. But, I'm confident I could accomplish
almost any task I would ever need to accomplish faster in Perl, and the result
would run faster, smaller, and more reliably. The same is true of Python,
though to a lesser degree (though some of the problem features in Python are
more uncomfortable for me...closures, in particular), but at least it has
_some_ Unicode support built in (or bolted on with reasonable competence), and
the VM tends to be closer to the speed of Perl than Ruby.

~~~
petercooper
Ruby has had _some_ Unicode support for years. As of 1.9, it supports Unicode
directly.

~~~
SwellJoe
I wasn't aware Ruby 1.9 existed. I thought the current Ruby version was
1.8.mumble.

Python 3.0 did just spring into existence while we were having this
discussion, and it finally has proper Unicode support. So, there's one less
reason to choose Perl over Python.

If Ruby has Unicode support in 1.9, and 1.9 were widely available, then I
guess that'd be true of Ruby as well. But, I just went to the Ruby website and
it looks like 1.8.7 is the Ruby version available. It doesn't have Unicode
support, does it?

~~~
petercooper
Strictly, strictly, strictly speaking, you're right: 1.8.7 is the current
"production" version of Ruby.

However, Ruby 1.9 has been around for about a year now (considered a
"development" release) but Ruby 1.9 _.1_ will become the "production" version
of Ruby when it's released in the next month (yeah, I know that makes no
sense). The current preview releases are pretty spot on though - so we're in a
transitional phase. Ruby 1.9's performance is also somewhat better than that
of 1.8.

On the 1.8 front, Ruby 1.8 has had what's called KCODE for years now, which
enables Unicode support for various bits and pieces (primarily regular
expressions). More info on this here:
[http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_...](http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/the_kcode_variable_and_jcode_library)

~~~
SwellJoe
If we're not strictly speaking about stable, widely available versions, how
about we talk about how awesome Perl 6 is? Because it really is astonishingly,
mind-bendingly awesome.

Granted, the leading Perl 6 implementation is still a little over a year away
(though Parrot hits 1.0 in March, which is a pretty cool milestone in and of
itself), and I imagine Ruby 1.9 will be widely available long before then.

