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Showing messages 1 through 12 of 12.

• Typo etc. :)
  2005-07-07 17:18:37  autrijus [View]
  
  

  
  The next version of Perl is Perl 6, not Perl 5.
  

  
  

  
  I think Perl 6 is holding on firm at its working-class roots. Of the proposals submitted by the Pugs lambdacamels, the design team consistently accepted only the ones that improves the "Practical" bit.
  

  
  

• It's a good summer for Perl
  2005-07-07 17:44:15  brian d foy | [View]
  
  
  You're doing more than updating your Perl catalog, you're publishing two important new books on Perl: Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook and Perl Best Practices. I think those are significant and important additions to the Perl literature.
  
  This summer is a big boon in updates, including Simon Cozens' rewrite of Advanced Perl Programming which is available right now, and the update of Learning Perl which hits the streets any day now.
  
  I'm also working on a major update to Learning Perl References, Objects, and Modules, although that won't hit the streets until next spring if everything goes right.
  
  And, at the WWDC where you, Nat Torkington, Randal Schwartz, and I just spoke in the Brown Bag Sessions, most of the 200 or so people in my audience not only knew about Perl already, but were using it everyday. It may not be the sexiest thing at the moment, but it's interesting enough that Apple invited us to speak about it, and a lot of people showed up to hear about it.
  
  Perl is still doing all the stuff it used to do, and is far from dead. :)

• Advanced Perl Programming
  2005-07-08 08:25:33  Jvenu [View]
  
  
  Typically the release of a Perl book is accompanied by a fair amount of screen real estate on ORA's site. How come it is virtually silent about the publication of Advanced Perl Programming, 2nd edition? Its almost turning out to be a non-event.
  
  --jag venugopal, still faithfully buying O'Reilly Pe(a)rls :)

• Some objective, empirical evidence
  2005-07-14 08:33:48  haywood [View]
  
  
  Results of a job posting search on www.dice.com:
  
  (Posts in last 10 days, all locations, no restrictions):

  
  
  Perl: 2700
  
  Python: 282
  
  Perl AND Python: 188
  
  Ruby: 20

  
  
  Seems to me Perl is pretty relevant...

  
  
  Keep in mind that Mr. O'Reilly's job is to sell
  books. If Python and Ruby (and probably soon Groovy)
  are the hot topics de jure, thats what he's going
  to sell, and it will be expressed in his stats.

  
  
  For those of us who make a living actually writing
  scripts, I'd suggest the DICE stats are more relevant.
  Book sales are more a leading (and I'd suggest very
  leading) indicator.

  
  
  Perl has matured. Like C, its become so de rigeur that
  employers tend to assume anyone they hire will know at
  least some Perl. Its just not sexy any more.
  And since it doesn't have major corporations flogging
  for it in the way that e.g., Java, C#, or VB.NET do,
  popular press tends to disregard it.

  
  
  Conveniently, the most current issue of
  Sysadmin magazine - possibly the most popular mag
  among people who actually keep all those racks of
  web servers and DBMS's running - includes
  the results of their annual editorial survey:

  
  
  "Which languages do you use most often?
  Shell (92%), Perl(87%), PHP(61%), C(61%),Python(37%)"
  - syslog, Sysadmin Vol. 14, Number 7

  
  
  In addition, many of the featured articles
  (Database access was the topic of the month)
  were essentially "Here's how to solve this problem
  using Perl" articles...even tho only the Wizard's
  monthly Perl column actually included Perl in the title.

  
  
  While I'd love to see faster progress on Perl6,
  I'd suggest the rumors of Perl's death are greatly
  exaggerated. If the perl community seems less inclined
  to astroturf for their favorite language, its probably
  because, due to the high demand expressed in those
  DICE numbers, we're too busy actually doing things
  with it.
  
  

• Back in the good old/bad old days.....
  2005-07-14 11:46:18  greengrass [View]
  
  
  I worked with a group of people that has never encountered Unix/Xenix. We working on for a nameless goverment agency on a undiscribable project running on Xenix on Altos 586. Towards the end, I asked the "senior designer" his opinion of Xenix. He said, "Interesting. It doesn't get between me and the problem I am trying to solve."
  
  The same is true for Perl, and in most cases, "It makes the impossible possible." L. Wall

• perl life cycle
  2005-07-17 08:41:35  unixguru [View]
  
  
  I use some basic perl in managing some servers. I have most of the perl books in my collection. Of late there are hardly any good books and most of the new ones is "old wine in new bottle". I plan to use PHP for web based applications. It really easier to learn. Also looking at Python(clean syntax!)
  
  To me Perl has evolved into a complicated programming language. I believe it is good most of the time for Sysadmin purposes. There are other languages which are better suited for other purposes. No need to use perl for everything !!
  
  Wish there was a "head first" series on Perl/PHP/Python
  
  
  
  
  

• Yes, very relevant
  2005-07-22 21:11:42  glennl [View]
  
  
  2 comments that I didn't see from anyone else...
  
  Tim can't be too overenthusiastic about Perl, because after all, he makes money from PHP and Python too.
  
  Tim's measure of Perl popularity is derived from book sales. Book sales are a measure of popular and major _changes_ to Perl, not to the popularity of Perl.

• Sales vs. demand vs. use and that graph
  2005-07-22 22:00:27  bioinfotools [View]
  
  
  Two thoughts:
  
  1. A quick glance at the graph that Tim links to in his article, shows that it doesn't show error margins or confidence bars. You really can't interpret data without confidence estimates, etc. Tsk, tsk, Tim, should know better! :-)
  
  I wonder if once they are added in the only conclusion might be that Visual Basic is declining (which it certainly is in that graph!). All the other languages are nearly remaining constant, which is interesting in itself.
  
  Java does seem to have the erratic (wavering?) support, though and its interesting how strong C/C++ is despite the brickbrats people hurl at it. And .NET has never really taken off to be the big all-sweeping thing Microsoft probably wanted it to be, it would seem.
  
  
  2. Book sales, demand by employers and use by choice will all differ.
  
  FWIW, perl is very strong in bioinformatics, although I've come to hate aspects of the language.
  
  There is also a historical element in that many projects are linked to a language for legacy reasons.
  
  Without boring on, I suspect the reality is more complex than book sales alone would indicate.

• Not quite the most perfect language, but ...
  2005-07-23 01:04:40  kgish [View]
  
  
  While Perl may not be the most perfect language (which one is?), it covers quite well just about every aspect an Internet programmer like myself might require, and in my opinion beats out all the other so-called programming languages hands down. A little complicated at times but unbelievably flexible, a bit geeky also but I'm a geek so that does not matter, and there is an extensive source of literature which makes good reading and late night entertainment into the wee hours of the morning. What hobby could be more fun may I ask?

• Ease of Learning a Factor
  2005-08-06 13:20:16  wheeles [View]
  
  
  I used to be a bit of a Perl hacker and had 4 different O'Reilly Perl books. I found that if I didn't write any Perl for a couple of weeks I would quickly forget the cryptic syntax and had to go back to the books when I next wanted to write some Perl.
  
  After a sabbatical from writing code I was faced with a challenge of writing a script to process some text. I could either use Perl and almost have to relearn the language from scratch (I'm sure it was designed to leak out of your head!), or try something new.
  
  I decided to try Ruby.
  
  Armed with only a few websites for reference (including the Pragmatic Programmers' online book) I quickly cobbled together my script in far less time than if I had used Perl. It was so much easier!
  
  Now I will never go back to Perl and have subsequently sold my Perl books (sorry, Tim). What's more, with the free online resources I am unlikely to buy a book on Ruby.
  
  If my experience is anything to go by, then I would suggest that the number of Perl books sold is not a good indicator of the popularity of the language; it's an indicator of how much you need to resort to books to actually use it.

• Perl will continue being Perl by many years.
  2005-08-20 16:23:44  ficovh [View]
  
  
  Perl is the pionner post modern computer language, and this will continue in the computer market for many more, why ? ok, good question .. Perl was written for a Hacker with vision, with power help, so, Larry Wall will demostrate Perl 6 is a choice programming language for all purposes (db, www, sysadmin etc.) and the other languages, meybe fork some aspects from Perl coming versions.
  
  Fco. Valladolid.
  

• Perl, more than porn?
  2005-08-23 14:34:57  epimanes [View]
  
  
  Google Zeitgeist (June 2005) numbers paint a slightly different picture than the chart of book sales by programming language (http://photos16.flickr.com/19788490_a28a007a66_o.png). If you look under "Indoor Queries" you'll see that Perl is searched more than literotica, Linux, & XBox 360. Many people seem to be going to the web for Perl information.
  
  http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html