<story><title>Perl 11</title><url>http://perl11.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickysielicki</author><text>Whenever I need to write a tiny script that tests the bounds of what is easily done with just awk and Bourne shell, the tool that I next reach for nowadays is Python. A few years back it was Perl5.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not exactly sure why I started reaching for Python instead. It&amp;#x27;s so much easier with perl to do things like backticks to call some utility, or to use system() and easily deal with its stdout and stdin, and I never have to do a Google search to figure out how to use a regular expression to process the output (whereas I almost always need to bring up the doc page for Python&amp;#x27;s re).&lt;p&gt;I think what it ultimately comes down to is tooling and the availability of good libraries. I call &amp;quot;python3 -m venv venv&amp;quot;, do an I&amp;#x27;m Feeling Lucky google search for &amp;quot;XXX library inurl:pypi&amp;quot;, and the sky is the limit with how easily I can make a script that does something relatively complicated. Comparing this with perl5 isn&amp;#x27;t even fair. You might find a cpan module that does what you want, and it might still be maintained, and you maybe can be bothered to figure out cpanminus, but anyone who has used perl in the last 5 years will agree, it&amp;#x27;s nowhere near as easy as it is with python.&lt;p&gt;Something that makes me optimistic about newer languages is that tooling is improving a great deal. It also makes me somewhat pessimistic about newer languages, though, if tooling is the primary aspect of a language that makes it popular.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never seriously tried perl6 but I&amp;#x27;ve seen enough of the language features to know that I was really excited about it, at least at one point. I hope that some derivative of perl can rise from the ashes, because I&amp;#x27;m too stupid to write actual lisp programs, but perl allows me to emulate what I imagine lisp programmers must feel.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wvenable</author><text>I have two experiences telling with Perl and Python.  Way back in the day, I had job doing web development in Perl.  I had no say in the matter, it was the only choice available.  And I actually used Perl enough to actually like it!  I mean I understand why people who like Perl really like Perl.&lt;p&gt;But just a few years after that and I could hardly even read Perl code let alone try and code in it again.&lt;p&gt;Python was is opposite; I never coded in Python but I ported a Python product SDK from Linux to Windows in a few weeks.  I could read it.  I could write it.  I made more mistakes with indenting than anything else.  Even to this day, I don&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; Python but I can muddle my way through and be reasonably productive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Perl 11</title><url>http://perl11.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickysielicki</author><text>Whenever I need to write a tiny script that tests the bounds of what is easily done with just awk and Bourne shell, the tool that I next reach for nowadays is Python. A few years back it was Perl5.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not exactly sure why I started reaching for Python instead. It&amp;#x27;s so much easier with perl to do things like backticks to call some utility, or to use system() and easily deal with its stdout and stdin, and I never have to do a Google search to figure out how to use a regular expression to process the output (whereas I almost always need to bring up the doc page for Python&amp;#x27;s re).&lt;p&gt;I think what it ultimately comes down to is tooling and the availability of good libraries. I call &amp;quot;python3 -m venv venv&amp;quot;, do an I&amp;#x27;m Feeling Lucky google search for &amp;quot;XXX library inurl:pypi&amp;quot;, and the sky is the limit with how easily I can make a script that does something relatively complicated. Comparing this with perl5 isn&amp;#x27;t even fair. You might find a cpan module that does what you want, and it might still be maintained, and you maybe can be bothered to figure out cpanminus, but anyone who has used perl in the last 5 years will agree, it&amp;#x27;s nowhere near as easy as it is with python.&lt;p&gt;Something that makes me optimistic about newer languages is that tooling is improving a great deal. It also makes me somewhat pessimistic about newer languages, though, if tooling is the primary aspect of a language that makes it popular.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never seriously tried perl6 but I&amp;#x27;ve seen enough of the language features to know that I was really excited about it, at least at one point. I hope that some derivative of perl can rise from the ashes, because I&amp;#x27;m too stupid to write actual lisp programs, but perl allows me to emulate what I imagine lisp programmers must feel.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fouc</author><text>In response to your last sentence.&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to mention that Ruby was highly inspired by Perl, particularly its regular expressions and it has a variety of perlisms.  Kind of surprised you went to python and not ruby.&lt;p&gt;Your lisp mention reminds me of this: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.randomhacks.net&amp;#x2F;2005&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;why-ruby-is-an-acceptable-lisp&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.randomhacks.net&amp;#x2F;2005&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;why-ruby-is-an-accepta...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>