From: Marc Heiler Date: 2008-06-14T04:33:27+09:00 Subject: Re: A crosspost from the Perl Community 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 http://tnx.nl/php 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. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.