use Perl

• Like COBOL? (Score:1)

  by Odud (1047) on 2002.04.17 6:20 (#7157) Journal

  Remember when the "death of COBOL" was regularly announced? Of course it never happened as there was so much code running production workloads (and there still is). What did seem to happen though was that COBOL programmers were marginalised - as it was no longer seen as interesting/relevant to newer coders - even with attempts to keep the language up to date.
  
  I don't know how much Perl 5 code is running production workloads - but I guess it is a huge amount and there will be no business drivers for upgrading it to Perl 6.
  
  So perhaps many people will be "stuck" doing support/maintenance for Perl 5 - probably for many years with a steadily dwindling support/interest base.
  
  If you can hold two similar languages|dialects in your head at the same time it will lead to some interesting problems - you may be maintaining an existing 5 module in one window and at the same time developing a new 6 module in the other - trying constantly not to cross over language features. I guess most people will try to concentrate exclusively on one or the other.
  
  Personally I think it will be a sad thing if the existing communities split into two camps - much of the vitality and sparkle will disappear and something wonderful will be gone forever.

  Reply to This

  • Re:Like COBOL? (Score:1)

    by pudge (1)

    Personally I think it will be a sad thing if the existing communities split into two camps - much of the vitality and sparkle will disappear and something wonderful will be gone forever.
    
    Thanks ... that is my only real point. :-)