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Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6

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  Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-28 21:32 +1100
    Re: Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6 Mario Figueiredo <marfig@gmail.com> - 2015-03-28 20:36 +0100
      Re: Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6 Sayth <flebber.crue@gmail.com> - 2015-03-28 19:57 -0700
      Re: Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-29 22:59 +1100

#88219 — Python 2/3 versus Perl 5/6

The famous Perl coder Allison Randal writes about why Perl is not dead (it's
just pining for the fjords *wink* ) and contrasts the Perl 5/6 split to
Python 2/3:

[quote]
The single biggest thing we didn’t anticipate is that the “community rewrite
of Perl” has, in fact, turned out to be a community fork. Perl 6 is not
like Python 3, which really is a continuation of Python 2, with the same
developers, same users, and same community values. (Sometime I’ll write
about my interest and contributions toward the Python 3 migration effort,
with its own unique successes and challenges.) What grew out of the Perl 6
idea is a new community, a new group of developers, and even a new
identity, “Rakudo” rather than Perl (with a phase of “Pugs” along the way).
The core Perl developers still work on Perl 5, and have little or no
interest in Rakudo. Some of the Rakudo developers have a background in
Perl, but many of them have a background in PHP, Java, C#, or other
languages.

Rakudo is not an “upgrade” from Perl. It’s revolutionary and exciting, just
like Perl was in 1987, but it is not Perl. Please note that I’m not
commenting on the similarity or difference of syntax between Perl and
Rakudo. If you take a long view over the history of programming languages,
syntax is about as relevant to the success of a language as the color of
the bike shed. And if you really, really get down to the nuts and bolts,
the syntax and functionality of Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Lua are all
fundamentally quite similar. That doesn’t make them the same language, and
more importantly it doesn’t make them the same community.
[end quote]


Read the rest here:


http://allisonrandal.com/2013/03/31/mythbusters-why-i-still-love-perl/


By the way, although Allison is not active here, she is an active Python
programmer and member of the PSF, that's the Python Software Foundation,
not the PSU, the Python Secret Underground, which most definitely does not
exist.



-- 
Steven

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#88236

On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 21:32:31 +1100, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:

>The famous Perl coder Allison Randal writes about why Perl is not dead (it's
>just pining for the fjords *wink* ) and contrasts the Perl 5/6 split to
>Python 2/3:

A shame Allison doesn't frequent these groups. I would have a few
questions for her.

Perl 6 is in fact a bit like Python 3. Perl 6 is an attempt to
recreate the language, addressing (by throwing away or heavily
changing) all the things that gave an indication the language would
stiffle and die and bring in new ideas to address the demands of
modern software design and implementation...

But that's not the thing that confuses me most about Allison's post.
The whole conversation about Rakudo not being Perl was.

Perl 6 is Perl. It is part of the Perl family. And Perl 6 has been
developed exclusively as a language specification. Which means it is
not a language implementation. Rakudo is one such implementation, for
the JVM, of the language specification known as Perl 6. Therefore
Rakudo is Perl 6, which means Rakudo is also Perl.

I mean, we can all agree Jython is Python. Maybe not CPython, but
Python. Maybe not pythonic in all its body, but Python. Rakudo is no
different. It's a shame(?) it is gaining no traction (and I think
Alisson optimism is either misplaced of whishful thinking). But Rakudo
is a reminder to everyone about the design principles and motivations
behind Perl 6. For good or bad, because no other implementation of
Perl 6 exists yet that can produce working code, which after all this
years can only mean that Perl 6 is in deep trouble.

The attempt at an analysis of Perl decline seemed to me also largely
unable to touch the real spot of why Perl has been declining over the
eyars (or rather, why it has declined into a stable but unconfortable
low). It doesn't help to try and come up with elaborate, albeit
sterile, language constructs. The Cookie Slap! Effect, Singularity
Paradox, or the Awkward Adolescent Fallacy are not only vain, but fail
to address what I believe is a much simpler explanation.

Simply, Perl did come at the right time. But Perl came with a grammar
and set of semantics that couldn't survive for long as soon as other
languages started to follow on its footsteps. Perl wasn't designed to
be a language of the future, rather to be a language that could solve
the present problems without much regard to how painful that solution
could be to maintain in the future.

And Perl solved a whole lot of problems. But now others are doing it
too. And in a way more in accordance to the requirements of modern
software development. It was simply necessary that languages like
Python or Ruby showed up or we would be knee-deep in maintenance hell.

Perl also addressed the problems of the so-called Web 1.0. But the Web
2.0 didn't present many of those problems anymore. Suddenly Perl
powerful text parsing features weren't so important as other
non-generic and more specialized languages started to address the
server and client side of web programming.

Maybe Perl has a future. I wouldn't count on it though. I think Perl
is really dying. I don't say this as a language advocate. That's
something I am not. At all. I don't defend or attack programming
languages, period. And that's because I find the exercise of
programming language advocacy one of the most tragic things to have
ever happened to computer science. Objective analysis is a dying art.

And if Perl eventually dies. It is no tragedy. It's the loss of a
programming language with no real place in the problem domain of
modern computing.

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#88241

Perl 6 tried to acheive to much, and by delay and confusion lost the enthusiasm of the community behind it Perl 6 and the at that time robust Perl 5 community who saw it as the future, when that future waned so did their's. 

Perl 6 should have just done what the community wanted at that time, introduce class::mop for a proper oop implementation abs tidy a few edge cases and pull in a few key modules into core.

They would now be talking Perl 7 and how to implement functional design into the new release with a larger community.

It would be interesting to see how Ruby would have progressed of Perl hadn't stuffed progress up so badly. To me Ruby has always looked like a tidy Perl.

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#88265

On Sun, 29 Mar 2015 06:36 am, Mario Figueiredo wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 21:32:31 +1100, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> 
>>The famous Perl coder Allison Randal writes about why Perl is not dead
>>(it's just pining for the fjords *wink* ) and contrasts the Perl 5/6 split
>>to Python 2/3:
> 
> A shame Allison doesn't frequent these groups. I would have a few
> questions for her.
> 
> Perl 6 is in fact a bit like Python 3. Perl 6 is an attempt to
> recreate the language, addressing (by throwing away or heavily
> changing) all the things that gave an indication the language would
> stiffle and die and bring in new ideas to address the demands of
> modern software design and implementation...
> 
> But that's not the thing that confuses me most about Allison's post.
> The whole conversation about Rakudo not being Perl was.
> 
> Perl 6 is Perl. It is part of the Perl family.

"Perl family" is not the same as Perl.

The Perl documentation is clear that they consider Perl 6 to be not just a
mere new version, but a completely different language:

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq1.html#What-is-Perl-6%3f


My understanding is that Perl 6 is related to Perl 5 in a similar way to
(say) Pascal to Algol, Objective-C to C, or Scheme to Lisp.



> And Perl 6 has been 
> developed exclusively as a language specification. Which means it is
> not a language implementation. Rakudo is one such implementation, for
> the JVM, of the language specification known as Perl 6. Therefore
> Rakudo is Perl 6, which means Rakudo is also Perl.
> 
> I mean, we can all agree Jython is Python. Maybe not CPython, but
> Python. Maybe not pythonic in all its body, but Python. Rakudo is no
> different.

The Perl core developers think it is. I have no reason to disagree with
them.

That's exactly the point that Allison Randal is making: Perl 6 has split
with the Perl community, despite Larry Wall's interest in it. That's not
the case with Python 3. Although take-up of Python 3 has been slow, it has
also been steady, and it is still the same language.


> It's a shame(?) it is gaining no traction (and I think 
> Alisson optimism is either misplaced of whishful thinking). But Rakudo
> is a reminder to everyone about the design principles and motivations
> behind Perl 6. For good or bad, because no other implementation of
> Perl 6 exists yet that can produce working code, which after all this
> years can only mean that Perl 6 is in deep trouble.

I don't know about that. Is Perl 6 in danger of running out of developers?
Could you wipe out the entire Perl 6 development team with one out of
control bus? I don't think so. A language like Cobra is, I think,
maintained by one person. Frink is even worse: not only is it maintained by
a single person, but it isn't even open source, so if he is hit by a bus,
Frink dies. (Which is terribly sad, because Frink is amazing.)

What is the minimum number of users that a language needs to survive long
term? Ten? Ten million? Somewhere in between?

If you define "not in the TIOBE top 10" as "in deep trouble", then sure,
Perl 6 is in deep trouble. But I think languages can survive for decades or
longer in small and not-so-small niches, and continue to be influential
long after the language has ceased to be maintained. There are still people
using PL/I and APL and Tcl/Tk, even if they aren't being used for new major
projects.



-- 
Steven

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