Perl and Undecidability (2008)
[not trying to hijack the discussion, but I think a meta-discussion is in order based on comments I&#x27;ve seen on this article]<p>The article is about whether or not you can actually parse Perl without running Perl to parse itself.  One of the benefits&#x2F;drawbacks to Perl is that it lets you run the interpreter at compile time, thus resulting in the possibility of an infinite loop preventing compilation.  Which makes some people unhappy.<p>Oddly enough, this reminds me of the whole strongly&#x2F;weakly typed discussion, with people weighing in and asserting one position or another, without really adequately comprehending the opposing position.<p>The meta-discussion here repeats almost every other discussion of Perl I see on HN and elsewhere.  First there is a claim of death, either in the past, or present.  Then there are claims that death was by sigil, line noise, etc.  Further, additional claims are that other tools have taken over its space.<p>The data used as evidence are StackOverflow analyses, or Tiobe scores, or, insert additional popular, and often self-selected, data sets.  You have to make specific assumptions about some of the data presented to be able to accept it, such that each community has about the same rate of people searching for answers on SO, or other places.  Or that the searches will have relevant terms in the in each case.<p>This is a stretch to put it mildly.  If I google for DBIx::Simple, and this search is caught by one of these filters, will it show up in Perl or not?  I can&#x27;t actually answer this.  I have to refer to what the collectors of the data say on their own methodology [1][2].  I am not saying that there are not secular changes throughout the industry, or that various observed gross trends are &quot;wrong&quot;.  What I am saying is be careful reading into these analyses too strongly, as they may not be measuring what you think they are measuring.<p>In many cases, over the last 20 years or so, I&#x27;ve seen folks pushing Python happily talking up why they left or abhor Perl, usually saying&#x2F;quoting things they&#x27;ve heard.  From my own experience, Perl 4 and onward, much of what they complain about was Perl 4 or before.  Likely before many of them started programming.  That is speculation on my part, but it does appear to fit what I&#x27;ve observed.<p>If I extend this out to operating systems, I have people tell me how horrible Linux is and how much better anything-other-than-linux is than it on a very regular basis.  They like to list (what they perceive to be) the faults, quote SO and other random websites as examples, and often make  pronouncements not backed up by objective fact ... in many cases contradicted by objective fact.<p>We as a society of technologists seem to like our tools to the point where we feel that we can and should break into tribes with tags of honor around our necks, and nasty comments about alternative tools, and users of said tools.  I&#x27;ve personally heard many an anecdote and critique of various tools from otherwise smart technologists that were, at best, badly misinformed, and at worst ... not simply disingenuous, but dishonest.<p>Look, it is great you like your tools, your operating system, your language.  It does not mean that you are &quot;better&quot; or &quot;smarter&quot; than someone else because you use such things.  And yes, I&#x27;ve had professional discussions as recently as last week on exactly this issue.  Which is insane.<p>Maybe I&#x27;ve spent too many years on the business side, as I look at all of these things as tools to accomplish a goal, and as engineers, our jobs are to select the right combination of tools to a) minimize effort, b) maximize the possibility of success, c) enable debugging, observability, supportability.<p>No single tool, OS, editor (yes, I went there) has this.  Moreover, if you need to bash what someone else is using simply for self gratification, then there are deeper issues afoot than simply a technological consideration.<p>Finally, I&#x27;ve been a user of Perl, and contributor to (CPAN) for more 20 years.  Rumors of its demise, are greatly exaggerated.  It is not my be-all&#x2F;end-all language ... I am comfortable and competent in 5-6 at any one time, and can easily work in Python, C, Julia, Node, etc. w&#x2F;o major issue (though with google nearby for things I don&#x27;t have on the tip of my memory).<p>I don&#x27;t use Perl for machine learning (though I could).  I don&#x27;t use it for numerics (though, again, I could).  I don&#x27;t use node for either of these.  You pick the right tool for the right job.  And you need to keep an open mind throughout the process on what the right tool is.<p>If you feel a need to bash on others choices, it might be worth reflecting why you think this course of action actually adds any light to a discussion.  From what I&#x27;ve seen, it only adds heat.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.codeeval.com&#x2F;codeevalblog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;2&#x2F;2&#x2F;most-popular-coding-languages-of-2016" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.codeeval.com&#x2F;codeevalblog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;2&#x2F;2&#x2F;most-popular-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;09&#x2F;introducing-stack-overflow-trends&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;09&#x2F;introducing-stack-over...</a><p>[edit: fixed ref spacing]