> Literally the only hard part there are the magic variables [..]
Sure, I'm not even saying that stuff like this makes Perl 'hard', just obscure and in many cases obfuscated. I have no idea whether you could write non-trivial Perl code that doesn't use magic variables or weird operators, but every piece of Perl code I have ever had to read or debug/maintain has suggested it's an integral aspect of the language. Maybe I've just been unlucky so far...
The code you linked to contains lots of other weird and obscure stuff by the way, I just picked the first routine to make my point. To illustrate it in another way: I challenge anyone who doesn't know anything about Perl to explain why there is another block labelled 'BEGIN' at the end of the module, which goes like this, and what it is needed for:
Imagine having to come up with this if you are new to Perl programming :-S
> The rest of your comment does not merit discussion because you've your prejudices and are content with them
That's funny, I hear the exact same thing every time I ask someone about what makes Perl great, and how it stands out from any other language. Somehow I never get a real answer, just accusations of being prejudiced or anti-Perl.
I'm not against any programming language (except maybe VB ;-), I'm just curious why Perl is still relevant for anything except legacy code, now that we have so many nice languages for almost every problem domain.
> I challenge anyone who doesn't know anything about Perl
Now that premise in itself is silly and you know it. (I could get a code sample for any language that would be impossible to understand by someone who doesn't know anything about tha language and it wouldn't even have to be a complicated one.)
> I'm just curious why Perl is still relevant for anything except legacy code
Few languages are as evolvable as Perl. Nowadays Perl has a better object system than Ruby and the only hard part is getting it into the core.
Also, i should probably point out that i got a tad unlucky in that the first example i grabbed was meant to do some fairly language-integral stuff, namely reloading all the libraries already loaded into memory: https://metacpan.org/module/Module::Refresh
>Now that premise in itself is silly and you know it. (I could get a code sample for any language that would be impossible to understand by someone who doesn't know anything about tha language and it wouldn't even have to be a complicated one.)
The difference, and reason his statement is relevant, is that perl is one of the easiest languages to find these kinds of examples for. Where there is smoke, etc.
>Few languages are as evolvable as Perl.
[citation needed] Are you aware of what is being done in other languages. Does perl run on the JVM yet?
>Nowadays Perl has a better object system than Ruby
This is a subjective statement, right? If not, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for citations again.
>and the only hard part is getting it into the core
Oh, right. So as a new programmer I'm going to have to dig around to figure out how to pull things in to make the language modern after I've already gone through the trouble of getting it setup? I saw a "modern best practices use recommendation" one time. There were like 25 or so (I'm not even joking) use statements at the top of the file. If you give me 25 lines to pull stuff in I could probably make BF usable.
> The difference, and reason his statement is relevant, is that perl is one of the easiest languages to find these kinds of examples for. Where there is smoke, etc.
Entirely by virtue of there existing a bulk of legacy software. Most other dynamic languages do not even have an appreciable amount of legacy software.
If i were to restrict myself to searching only the past 5 years of produced Perl code on CPAN i would be hard-pressed to find truly terrible samples.
Either way you managed to entirely miss the point that for a person with no knowledge about a language (including no knowledge about sibling languages), any example of source would be nearly impossible to understand at first try.
> [citation needed] Are you aware of what is being done in other languages. Does perl run on the JVM yet?
I said language, not virtual machine.
> I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for citations again.
When does Ruby plan to have Roles?
> I've already gone through the trouble of getting it setup
Hahahaha. Trouble setting up perl, good one, pal. Also, i know what sample you saw once. That was written as a joke. It is a boilerplate tchrist made to demonstrate what would be necessary to make scripts entirely and absolutely perfect with unicode. (Note: Perl's default state is still better in handling unicode than most other languages.)
> So as a new programmer I'm going to have to dig around
Right now, yes. Which is why i wrote the blog post mentioned above. How kind of you to notice.
>If i were to restrict myself to searching only the past 5 years of produced Perl code on CPAN i would be hard-pressed to find truly terrible samples.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "truly terrible samples". If you mean "things the thread-OP couldn't understand" then I would be surprised if your statement is correct. Was the example he provided from CPAN?
>I said language, not virtual machine.
People are doing "crazy" things in every language. Including porting them to the JVM so they can use the whole body of Java libraries (which is more than what's on CPAN btw).
>When does Ruby plan to have Roles?
I'm not a ruby guy but ruby has mixins which fill the same niche (even if they probably behave a little differently to accomplish it).
>Trouble setting up perl, good one, pal.
It depends. If I'm on a modern Linux, sure, if it's not already there I can apt-get it. That's not always the case though.
>That was written as a joke
I'm pretty sure the one I saw from Chromatic. It had various Moose stuff in it as well. Surely you don't have to pull in the whole OO framework to get unicode to work?
>Right now, yes. Which is why i wrote the blog post mentioned above. How kind of you to notice.
So finally you accept a criticism. But only the one you made yourself already. And they say Rails is a ghetto...
I'm not a ruby guy but ruby has mixins which fill the same niche (even if they probably behave a little differently to accomplish it).
Mixins don't even compare to roles; mixins in Ruby (at least Ruby 1.8 this was true) manipulate inheritance, and so they suffer from ordering problems. The compiler can't warn you about collisions and conflicts.
Of course they do. They may not be as good as perl's Roles but you can't say "Ruby doesn't even have a way to do this" as the GP did (paraphrased). They do, perhaps it's not as nice but it's there.
One of the explicit design goals for roles was to solve the flaws of mixins. We succeeded. While it may be technically correct to object to a hyperliteral interpretation of an English idiom, I stand by the assertion that the presence of roles in Perl 5's Moose and Perl 6's object system makes for a better object system than Ruby with mixins.
Man, please, you could at least read the whole thing. I provided the sample, randomly pulled from CPAN and that dude harped on one small extract.
> mixins
Hm, gonna have to admit i have no clue about those. Will read up at some point.
> It depends. If I'm on a modern Linux, sure, if it's not already there I can apt-get it. That's not always the case though.
Perl is on every linux, no exception. It may not be the newest one, but even then you can use perlbrew to install whatever version you want for your own user account. But seriously, perl is on every linux.
And even on windows it's as stupidly simple as downloading an installer and clicking 5 times.
> moose ... boilerplate
You wouldn't include Moose in a boilerplate thing.
> criticism
I work daily with Perl, i've considered MANY criticisms, i have a whole book of criticisms of my own. The problem you're running into is that i've already spent a hell of a lot more time thinking about those criticisms than you have.
>I provided the sample, randomly pulled from CPAN and that dude harped on one small extract.
I missed that part. But I find it highly amusing that you randomly pulled a sample file from CPAN an already failed your own test.
>Hm, gonna have to admit i have no clue about those. Will read up at some point.
Fair enough, but I feel compelled to point out that you've been harping on me all over this thread for not reading things yet you declare perl's OO (bolted on via a library, no less) superior to ruby's without even knowing how ruby's works.
>Perl is on every linux
Linux yes. Not every Unix, not every Windows.
>You wouldn't include Moose in a boilerplate thing.
It was. It was a boilerplate list of things one should use to make perl a modern language. I think they wanted to make one module that did all these uses for you so you could just use that, but the point remains. It takes a lot of modification to stock perl to bring it up to the level of the competition.
>The problem you're running into is that i've already spent a hell of a lot more time thinking about those criticisms than you have.
I worked daily with perl for half a decade. I can believe that you have spent more time thinking about the criticism because you apparently like perl. I had no emotional attachment to it so when I saw languages that didn't have those problems I left it and never looked back.
Wait, you'll only consider languages that come pre-installed on all Unices and Windows? That's a pretty short list!
Or are you complaining that Perl isn't available for some Unices or some versions of Windows? I'm curious to know what version of Unix or Windows has Python and/or Ruby interpreters available, but doesn't have Perl.
No, you've completely misunderstood my post. I was saying "I have to do all the effort to install perl and then I still have to do more work to actually write a program". We then took a detour where it was claimed there is no effort involved in installing perl. Well, sometimes there is. There is with other languages too, but at least once I have them installed I can just use them without having to go read about about current use statements I should be using.
Most of the ugly code can be avoided nowadays.. but for special cases (as that one) and a few not-so-special cases, the code can get ugly. At least until you get used to it ;)
Also, perl is very flexible which is a good thing. But for better or for worse, perl lets people do crazy things.
Actually, that flexibility is one great things about perl. If you know what you are doing, you can adapt the style for the purpose. For example, hack together something fast, and if it looks like a viable solution, flesh it out into something more maintainable. This is true for other languages as well, but IMHO, even more so for perl.
When ever I hear people sing the praises of perl it just always make me think most haven't really sat down and learn many other languages. It's like hearing an English speaker say something like "man, English is so great because you can... like, express yourself in it! And there are even lots of ways to express yourself in it! And you can express all kinds of stuff!". Great, so it's like all the other languages then?
Sure, I'm not even saying that stuff like this makes Perl 'hard', just obscure and in many cases obfuscated. I have no idea whether you could write non-trivial Perl code that doesn't use magic variables or weird operators, but every piece of Perl code I have ever had to read or debug/maintain has suggested it's an integral aspect of the language. Maybe I've just been unlucky so far...
The code you linked to contains lots of other weird and obscure stuff by the way, I just picked the first routine to make my point. To illustrate it in another way: I challenge anyone who doesn't know anything about Perl to explain why there is another block labelled 'BEGIN' at the end of the module, which goes like this, and what it is needed for:
==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8
==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8==>8Imagine having to come up with this if you are new to Perl programming :-S
> The rest of your comment does not merit discussion because you've your prejudices and are content with them
That's funny, I hear the exact same thing every time I ask someone about what makes Perl great, and how it stands out from any other language. Somehow I never get a real answer, just accusations of being prejudiced or anti-Perl.
I'm not against any programming language (except maybe VB ;-), I'm just curious why Perl is still relevant for anything except legacy code, now that we have so many nice languages for almost every problem domain.