Re^2: [RFC] What is [pP]erl to you, and how has this changed for you over the years (if it has)?

[Anonymous Monk]

Perl's a language – useful of course also for "one-liner" utilities – but to me its greatest strength is CPAN. Of all the many programming tools that I have worked with both recently and in the past, none of them have offered anything comparable to it. "The Perl programming language" is positively tiny, but the total ecosystem goes on forever and ever.

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Just a gentle reminder that in the root node the OP made a polite (and unusual) request to "refrain from replying to anyone else (except OP)" and to "post only once, feel free to edit/update your node as much as you want". I'm aware that in replying here I am not abiding by that request :) ... but the original AM started it by (unnecessarily) replying to talexb instead of the OP. Now, who do we know who has a long history of replying to the wrong post? :) Update: again.

[talexb]

"The Perl programming language" is positively tiny ..

Huh. My copy of Programming Perl, Fourth Edition (Christiansen, foy & Wall, O'Reilly Media, Inc., February 2012) tops out at 1,130 pages and weighs 1.7 kilos. If that's what you consider a 'tiny' language, your scale may need .. re-calibration. ;)

[Anonymous Monk]

The interpreter is tiny and fast – the language ecosystem is huge. There's more than one way to do anything, and it's probably already been done for you better than you could do it yourself. Contrast this with PHP, where there's only one way and release N+1 does it differently.

[talexb]

And that's another vote for Perl .. the community tries really, really hard not to break existing code. Scripts or modules that are twenty years old still run fine on recent Perls. That's very important from a risk management point of view.

[Your Mother]

I’ll take Grossly Generalized Misunderstandings for $600, Alex.

PHP is littered with redundant, overlapping, barely differing, keywords. It’s the poster-child for TIMTOWTDI taken to developmentally disabled extremes.

[Anonymous Monk]

The interpreter is tiny and fast

lol

[Anonymous Monk]

"The Perl programming language" is positively tiny

Ehhh... Wrong. Again. smh