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gabor (1626)

gabor
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http://szabgab.com/
Perl developer and trainer [szabgab.com]
Test automation using Perl [szabgab.com]

Journal of gabor (1626)

Wednesday December 03, 2008
11:47 AM

What do you do to undie Perl?

[ #38011 ]
Ovid started a large thread about how Perl 5 is dying.
Instead of arguing if TIOBE measures it correctly or not or if you think Perl (in general, not just 5) is going down or if you think it is doing well, let's think about what to do in order to make it more popular?
If for nothing else so we can feel better that we are using something that is popular.

Lately I have been thinking that maybe the biggest issue of Perl is that it is not friendly enough to beginners. Especially Windows users. So I try to Make it friendlier to beginners, especially those using Windows.

That means for me, creating an IDE that will have

  • Context sensitive help in the mother tounge of the developer
  • A built in debugger
  • Sample scripts
  • Tool to build Moose based application
  • Tool to build Catalyst based web application
  • ...

I am sure some others will think that this is a good investment in the future of Perl. You are welcome to join us.

Others will think this is a total waste of time but something else is needed.

What do you do to undie Perl?


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  • People need to be able to do cool shit with a minimum of fuss. Writing amazing text filters with a command line was pretty slick ten, fifteen years ago. Now, who cares? So what CAN you do with Perl that is Amazing?
    --

    --
    xoa

    • It's still all about CPAN. I write a maintenance utility for my company's product, which runs on Windows 2003 and supports MS-SQL and Oracle databases. I use ActiveState's products to compile .exe's and hide the Perl from the users. I started with Perl because I already knew it and didn't need to buy a new toolset; I keep using it because CPAN keeps making the job easier. When I needed to produce historical graphs, I brought in an RRD module and it just worked. When I needed to check a web page for somethin
  • I don't know if this is still cool shit - but there are tools for generating Catalyst and database based simple web applications [catalystframework.org]. In particular I would like to finish my InstantCRUD [catalystframework.org] framework and add to it some cool stuff like REST [catalystframework.org], authentication etc.

  • I think that Perl, as a flexible programming language and a great tool, as a great collection of modules in CPAN, or as a community of experienced developers, has everything that's needed for success. It has even more.

    It is great (and also very necessary) that we argue about sigils and try to make language even better, take it to the next level, but that's not really the biggest thing people are looking for when evaluating the tools for their jobs at hand.

    What really is missing, is good marketing and p

    • Sorry, I should have said that the layout and presentation is awful. The content is excellent and first-class.

  • They keep talking how superior our tools for writing Web 2.0 apps are and I believe them. If only I had a clue about writing software for the web.

    Seems like at just the right moment there's a reasonably good way to show off what Catalyst, Mojo, and the other cool kids can do:

    http://incubator.apache.org/olio/ [apache.org]

  • When I was reading all this "Perl is dying" blogs in the last days, I was fairly shocked. WTF is going on with you guys? Winter Depression? Comparing Perl with Cobol and tell the world Perl is dying because some crappy Top10 I never heard about before say so? Perl is a really cool programing language, IMHO the most flexible one on the market. It's the standard tool for every serious Unix admin (and many Windows admins too) and I know many great Software Developer who're (still) in love with Perl - even if t

    • Cool success story!
      I have small webdev company in small Russian city now. We use Perl in all our works, no one do that here at all. I`m developer and manager too, and I always say our clients -- we use Perl this is good for you. And when we done good work, our clients know cause -- we use Perl :)

      I hope my company grow up, we working hard for that.

      (Please excuse my awful English too :-)

  • I try to run and make a local Perl Mongers group alive. +Helped to organize local Perl Workshop. +Blog about Perl in my local language. +Write and maintain CPAN modules.

    In my opinion, Perl is not for everyone and certainly not for masses. Perl is a language for technical based people, not designers and managers that's why the look and marketing is not on the first place.

    Still quality products makes good publicity. I'm really sceptic about projects like starting new editor. As with anything new now, to start

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