Perl 5.32 Released With Unicode 13.0 Support, Performance Enhancements

[kpedersen]

I think it's a shame the language is in decline because conventions seem to have matured and the language evolution that stagnated for so long seems to be picking up speed.

Agreed. I am actually quite thankful that it is one of the few languages in OpenBSD base because that gives me an excuse to use it for almost everything where using a compiler would be overkill.

There is also work just starting to bring a full object-oriented system into the Perl core, instead of forcing the use of a module like Moose or Moo.

I have always used OOP via closures (not the most efficient way). However mostly to avoid packages (I am not a fan of CPAN, not because it is badly done but I feel that language package managers tend to create a technical debt of dependencies that reduce future maintenance and lifespan). Having it part of the language is actually something I didn't know they were doing.

I also think Perl benefits by the fact that the Perl 6 language was split off and renamed Raku.

I have been impressed by the decision of the Perl community to formally diverge (i.e Raku as a separate but related project) rather than try to keep it as one language that no-one is particularly happy with. I have no reason to dislike Raku and I have always been meaning to have a play with it; however I really appreciate the ability to avoid breakage of ancient code by allowing Perl to remain Perl. This is a rare scenario that hasn't happened to many languages (showing Perl's maturity and increases my trust in it).

[Michael_S]

I have always used OOP via closures (not the most efficient way). However mostly to avoid packages (I am not a fan of CPAN, not because it is badly done but I feel that language package managers tend to create a technical debt of dependencies that reduce future maintenance and lifespan). Having it part of the language is actually something I didn't know they were doing.

I agree completely with minimizing external dependencies. I am glad the new builtin object system is under discussion, but I bet we're years away from having the full thing builtin and available - maybe in Perl 5.38 or something.

I have been impressed by the decision of the Perl community to formally diverge (i.e Raku as a separate but related project) rather than try to keep it as one language that no-one is particularly happy with. I have no reason to dislike Raku and I have always been meaning to have a play with it; however I really appreciate the ability to avoid breakage of ancient code by allowing Perl to remain Perl. This is a rare scenario that hasn't happened to many languages (showing Perl's maturity and increases my trust in it).

Agreed. Though anyone itching for an excuse to bash Perl will just claim the Perl community still botched by waiting nineteen years to diverge. But at least now there is a path forward.

I would push you to try Raku, but you opened your post with "one of the few languages in OpenBSD base because that gives me an excuse to use it for almost everything" - and I doubt OpenBSD base will ever include Raku. Try it for fun if you like, but - to my dismay - I doubt we'll see widespread industry Raku use in the next five years.

[NotMine999]

Not sure about universities, but I learned a couple of basics on Perl in programming class on my college in 2013 or so. And my teacher was about 27 years old IIRC, so not an old dude stuck is his ways or something.

Age of instructor should have nothing to do with course content when the instructor is competent in teaching the material and openly interacting with the class.

Vistaus So I guess you went to Uni where they taught age discrimination, eh?

[kpedersen]

Age of instructor should have nothing to do with course content when the instructor is competent in teaching the material and openly interacting with the class.

Its true. I was a similar age when I started and yet I am a massive luddite! XD
To my defence I want to make sure a technology provides itself before I waste the students time learning it.

Especially in the games industry, the hot new technology is usually temporary vapourware and fizzles out. Wasting the time of all those who committed to it. Flash, Unity and XNA come to mind.

[starshipeleven]

Perl was so fun to learn in university last year. Coming from a C and C++ background and being in a scripting class it was a God sent. Perl scripting > bash scripting imo.

Nearly every scripting language is better than bash, probably because bash isn't a language but a command line interface with some scripting ability added.

[starshipeleven]

Age of instructor should have nothing to do with course content when the instructor is competent in teaching the material and openly interacting with the class.
Vistaus So I guess you went to Uni where they taught age discrimination, eh?

It seems you skipped reading comprehension at primary school...

He mentioned the age of his teacher to point out that his teacher wasn't an old and useless derelict that teaches old and useless things just because that's the only thing he knows. This type of useless teacher isn't uncommon in teaching institutions. Age is only part of the identikit of this type of teacher.

[kylew77]

Interesting, I didn't think anyone still learnt Perl these days, and that Python was what was taught at universities.
Yeah, Bash scripting isn't so good, its mainly for smaller things, it's not fast, its not feature rich, and if you use Bash-isms then it doesn't run on other shell interpreters.

Illinois Tech fall 2019 semester. Shell Scripting for System Administration. We used Bash, Awk and Sed, Perl, and PowerShell.

[Vistaus]

Age of instructor should have nothing to do with course content when the instructor is competent in teaching the material and openly interacting with the class.

I never implied that. In fact, he was a great teacher! Shame he eventually left, I missed his class.

Vistaus So I guess you went to Uni where they taught age discrimination, eh?

Eh, uid313 was the one talking about "no one learning Perl *these days*." So he was the one implying Perl is not taught by/to youngsters anymore, which is why I replied to him the way I did.

[dkasak]

then we shall have to agree to disagree!

The Perl Is Glue mantra from yesteryear has become unstuck

Yeah, I've heard this from people who claim to be developers ... then I've read their code, and corrected them on both fronts.

[dkasak]

I think it's a shame the language is in decline because conventions seem to have matured and the language evolution that stagnated for so long seems to be picking up speed. Nowadays you're supposed to use "use strict; use warnings;" everywhere, and most new code does. All of our ETL code at work is in Perl, and even though I haven't used the language extensively since the 1990s when I have questions about ETL I can usually find the answer myself without asking him - he just writes nice, clear code.

Nice. You might find one of my projects of use: https://github.com/Ringerrr/Open_SDF

I have a flatpak repo, and I'm getting confluence up to scratch too: https://smart-associates.atlassian.n...1/Introduction

If you're interested, let me know. I'm more than happy to chat / demo ... either privately or 'officially'. We're *just* approaching our 1st 'official' open-source release. Code is sitting there already, obviously ... but it's taking time to get the 'official' ball rolling.