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Perl is dying
Six years ago, Perl was the undisputed leader in programming languages to develop web applications. Python, Ruby and other languages were starting.
Six years after the promise of continuous release of Perl 6 and Perl hackers are choosing to use other languages, try to summarize a little history of this language:
Larry Wall began work on Perl in 1987 with version 1.0, the language has rapidly expanded in the following years. Perl 2, released in 1988, provided a better regular expression engine. Perl 3, released in 1989, added support for binary data.
Perl 4 resulted in a series of maintenance releases, culminating in 4036 Perl in 1993.
Perl 5 was released on October 17, 1994. It was almost a complete rewrite of the interpreter, and added many new features to the language, including objects, references, packages and modules.
So far all but normal What about Perl 6?
In 2006, Perl 5 is still maintained. Now includes support Unicode. The latest stable version is released Perl 5.8.8.
Version 6 is in development since 2001, and will mean a complete change in language and motor.
Why is this happening?
The first reason is that Perl became very popular for a single reason: CGI (Common Gateway Interface), which is an important technology of the World Wide Web that allows a client (Web browser) to request data from a program in a web server.
For about 5 years Perl was the only way for our web applications. If you wanted a site capable of running more than just a static HTML code, we need to use Perl. The developers used it for that reason and not because they agree with the philosophy of Perl.
mod_perl solve problems related to the CGIs but not before some other cause headache. Unfortunately it was too powerful Perl, this may sound strange, but think for a moment, the scripts running under mod_perl and get a decent performance that was needed had your own server, or migrate to Windows and rewrite your code to suit ASP.
This left a great void, a vacuum that was exploited by PHP and recently also for Ruby on Rails. People no longer needed to buy a server where the PHP offered was sufficient.
Although the Perl community would not allow a monopoly share of web development, Perl still had other problems since its inception.
Most people who write Perl programmers were not true. System administrators were amateurs or to amuse them and used it as a hobby. They had never learned the techniques of web development so the code was a complete disaster.
Ugly, inconsistent and unreadable for those who were not behind their backs at least 2 or 3 years of programming, this was the reason that turned ugly in a language Perl and questionable reputation.
Write Perl code quality is really a fascinating task, but we can ensure that less than 5% of the developers can include in this category.
It is amazing that most repositories Perl code is awash with sloppy and poorly structured.
Perl needs something new, something that is likely to have the performance of mod_perl, but that does not endanger the Apache, something as easy as PHP or ROR, with a great name and a great API.
Developers need to stop writing code badly structured or at least reduce these lines badly structured, Perl 6 also needs to be launched as soon as possible, this year not in 2008 or 2010, because then nobody cares, something with which the people might start using Perl because otherwise they will die within a few years. If you need to maintain your PERL code the best in town are gocipher.com
Six years after the promise of continuous release of Perl 6 and Perl hackers are choosing to use other languages, try to summarize a little history of this language:
Larry Wall began work on Perl in 1987 with version 1.0, the language has rapidly expanded in the following years. Perl 2, released in 1988, provided a better regular expression engine. Perl 3, released in 1989, added support for binary data.
Perl 4 resulted in a series of maintenance releases, culminating in 4036 Perl in 1993.
Perl 5 was released on October 17, 1994. It was almost a complete rewrite of the interpreter, and added many new features to the language, including objects, references, packages and modules.
So far all but normal What about Perl 6?
In 2006, Perl 5 is still maintained. Now includes support Unicode. The latest stable version is released Perl 5.8.8.
Version 6 is in development since 2001, and will mean a complete change in language and motor.
Why is this happening?
The first reason is that Perl became very popular for a single reason: CGI (Common Gateway Interface), which is an important technology of the World Wide Web that allows a client (Web browser) to request data from a program in a web server.
For about 5 years Perl was the only way for our web applications. If you wanted a site capable of running more than just a static HTML code, we need to use Perl. The developers used it for that reason and not because they agree with the philosophy of Perl.
mod_perl solve problems related to the CGIs but not before some other cause headache. Unfortunately it was too powerful Perl, this may sound strange, but think for a moment, the scripts running under mod_perl and get a decent performance that was needed had your own server, or migrate to Windows and rewrite your code to suit ASP.
This left a great void, a vacuum that was exploited by PHP and recently also for Ruby on Rails. People no longer needed to buy a server where the PHP offered was sufficient.
Although the Perl community would not allow a monopoly share of web development, Perl still had other problems since its inception.
Most people who write Perl programmers were not true. System administrators were amateurs or to amuse them and used it as a hobby. They had never learned the techniques of web development so the code was a complete disaster.
Ugly, inconsistent and unreadable for those who were not behind their backs at least 2 or 3 years of programming, this was the reason that turned ugly in a language Perl and questionable reputation.
Write Perl code quality is really a fascinating task, but we can ensure that less than 5% of the developers can include in this category.
It is amazing that most repositories Perl code is awash with sloppy and poorly structured.
Perl needs something new, something that is likely to have the performance of mod_perl, but that does not endanger the Apache, something as easy as PHP or ROR, with a great name and a great API.
Developers need to stop writing code badly structured or at least reduce these lines badly structured, Perl 6 also needs to be launched as soon as possible, this year not in 2008 or 2010, because then nobody cares, something with which the people might start using Perl because otherwise they will die within a few years. If you need to maintain your PERL code the best in town are gocipher.com
Albert Sirvent - Grupo DomainGurus