use Perl

• More is better, less is more. (Score:1)

  by finanalyst (9378) on 2009.12.29 3:49 (#71452)

  Perl6 almost certainly will dominate the professional software environment within a few years of the first practical implementation. The business case for using perl6 as the primary development language in a business or software house are as follows:

  1. Perl6 is inherently parallel. Junctions (and other innovative language contructs) offer programmers an intellectually easy method for writing programs with parallelism. Multiple cores already are required to increase computer performance, so languages that offer high-level support for parallelism will have advantages over "single-track" languages.

     More is better.

  2. Perl6 is elegant to program in. The fewer lines needed to implement functionality, the easier it is to comprehend. Every time I look at Java or Basic, I wonder at the 'word magic' beliefs of their language designers, viz., more words, more magic.

     Comprehensibility of program expression is essential in the business world because extension and maintenance are always handled by different people from the initial implementors.

     Less is more.

  3. Perl6 is being designed and built in a way an engineer, not a theoretician, approaches a solution. Specifications first, then tests, then implementation, then an iteration back to specifications and tests. By the time a production version of perl6 is released, its reliability will be documented. This provides a very strong argument for a business deciding which of several options to use as its primary language base.

     A theoretician has a single goal - however that may be expressed - and everything else is superfluous. The languages typically produced by the computer science world are difficult to use beyond a narrow domain because the extra work to provide flexibility and strength get in the way of the narrowly defined theoretical aims.

     More is better.

  Evidence for each of the above can already be found in the way significant modules have been rapidly developed and maintained, even though the language itself remains in flux.

  There are my top three strengths for Perl6; I'll not mention others for brevity.

  Weaknesses Currently the bugbear is speed. The first "practical" implementation would need to ensure rapid runtime and good compilation speeds. If perl6 software is too slow, it will be impractical.

  Caveat A language without an IDE and visual debuggers cannot be considered modern or effective. So far, the omens are good and Padre already provides for syntax coloring.

  Since the business case for the complete language is strong, the business case for those individuals who are investing their personal resources of time and talent to bring perl6 to a practical implementation is correspondingly strong. Essentially, the uptake of perl6 by the professional software community will create a premium for those who have a deep understanding of the language and how to access its strengths.

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:1)

    by chromatic (983)

    If [Perl 6] software is too slow, it will be impractical.

    That's too simplistic. Plenty of projects do just fine with languages and runtimes and environments considered "too slow" for other projects.

    A language without an IDE and visual debuggers cannot be considered modern or effective.

    That's too simplistic too, depending on your definition of "modern" and "effective". I never use the Perl 5 debugger and I wouldn't likely use it if I had an IDE with a visual debugger. I believe I can write very effect