On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 10:36:15PM +0100, Anders Andersson wrote: > Of course its age is showing in some areas but in my experience, those > things are actually still worked on, and have been fixed without major > incompatibilities (python3 anyone?).
The only thing that's really missing in perl is proper thread support. Don't know if that's going to happen. Its garbage collector is also slightly peculiar... I remember looking really hard for a leak because a file handle in an anonymous sub wouldn't be properly collected (the one from pkg_add's progressmeter, actually) I have a wish-list of things that are not that likely to happen, I would like to be able to use prototypes on methods, for instance. > I remember a few years ago when I was briefly researching a > replacement for perl for my personal projects and I tried out python3 > and ruby in parallel and ruby was definitely the winner there. I have > absolutely no idea why python even gained the popularity it has, it > felt like a random hack, especially compared to ruby. The only thing I > really miss from python is "yield". Yeah, native coroutine support without a hack would be a blast. Even C++ is getting that for its next main revision. The popularity of python is partly explained by them catering more to teaching needs. As far as I know, there is no equivalent of the python notebooks. Stuff like jupyter means you don't even have to install complicated arcane stuff to learn python. Cool for the young pups. Perl also missed a turn for web development. I think Catalyst was a huge mistake (hey, you've got *choices* everywhere. Let's confuse everyone), so a lot of people didn't transition from Meson to another perl module, but instead switched to ruby-on-rails or something like that. Dancer was a few years too late to the party.
