Perl is dead

[Abigail]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 01:40:41PM +0000, Avleen Vig wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Robin Berjon <robin at berjon.com> wrote:
> > On Dec 4, 2008, at 13:33 , Philippe Bruhat (BooK) wrote:
> >>
> >> How do we reach people outside the community after having spent so much
> >> time talking to ourselves?
> >
> > This is something that I don't have the technical know-how to accomplish,
> > but a way of using Perl from within PHP, I'm guessing as a library
> > extension, would provide a strong deployment vector into a large and
> > talkative community that is often blissfully ignorant that there even is
> > anything else. It would be a neat way to show cool tricks, and the power of
> > CPAN. Doug MacEachern had suggested he was working on something like that
> > ages ago, but I don't know if it went anywhere.
> 
> We could just ask people what the don't like about perl, or what
> they'd like to see change / improve.
> 
> They'll probably rattle off a list of things which they like about
> other languages which they don't like in perl, but that's not
> necessarily a bad thing. It might show us the strengths in other
> languages that we lack?

Hmmm. So, we go to Python people, and they gives a us a list of things
they don't like about Perl. We go back to our woodshop, and turn Perl into
Python. Then we go to the Java guys and ask them. And out next version of
Perl will look like Java. Repeat this a few times, and you end up with a
language noone uses. It now resembles something users of other languages
like, but they already have said language, so they won't switch. But the
people that used Perl in the first place (because Perl is what it is) no
longer use it, because it's no longer Perl.

Ask yourself. How much would PHP, Java, Python, whatever need to change to
make you as a Perl programmer switch to that language? Would that language
still be that language as it's now?

The moment Perl start to implement features of other language for the 
purpose of attracting programmers away from other languages, I'll be
convinced Perl is dying. And I'll join a language/community that is convinced
of its own strength.



Abigail