hi, i was interested if perl is still relevant in this day and age. Perl has been on the decline for a very long time now. Perl 6 (now named 'raku) not being backwards compatible with perl 5 code made the already small perl community even smaller by splitting it in half. A good example is lisp with it’s thousands of different dialects.

Is it still worth using or is it bound to legacy software forever? Like cobol.

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      The illegible code claim has always baffled me.

      You can write perfectly legible code in perl. You can write illegible code in python if you really want to.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Define “people”. People you work with? Old codebases from your workplace?

          Well, from my experience, people don’t write illegible perl code.

      • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        The variable prefixes make it easy in Perl to write line noise, and there are much more “magical defaults”.

        What’s the most illegible code you have found in Python?

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          How is type information noise instead of a helpful feature?

          I haven’t looked for illegible Python code out there.

      • slinkyninja@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Writing legible Perl code is the complete antithesis of what the language was created for. This comment shows a complete misunderstanding of Larry Wall’s work.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Lol what are you talking about?! What is this LW’s point you’re referring to? “Write non-readable code, everyone”?

          I’m guessing you’re referring to him saying “there’s more than one way to do things”, and that’s not mutually exclusive from writing legible code.

            • drzow
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              There’s an obfuscated C contest too - no one ever assumed that K&R opposed highly legible code. I seem to recall that Kerrigan actually wrote some books to the contrary.

            • El Barto@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              That’s a non-argument, man. You just linked to a contest.

              That’s like saying that the FAA endorses unsafe airplane building practices because they hold a contest about unmanned cardboard made planes that fly the most length in a desert without crashing.