[Gllug] Perl - was: Perl Question - Spam Filter for NMS Form Mail

[Richard Huxton]

Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 21:05 +0000, Ryan Cartwright wrote:
>> 2009/2/9 Martin A. Brooks <martin at hinterlands.org>:
>>> Henry Gilbert wrote:
>>>> I am beginning to like Perl, I want to learn more some day.
>>>>
>>> You'll need one of these:
>>>
>>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Perl-Randal-Schwartz/dp/0596520107
>> seconded and couple it with one of these:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Perl-3rd-Larry-Wall/dp/0596000278

You might want the "Best Practices" book too. And skim through the
perlmonks.org site every few days to see what you learn.

> At the start of the year Jonathan Corbett opined in the Linux Weekly
> News that this year was make or break for Perl and it was looking more
> break than make.
> 
> It made me wonder if I really should brush up my skill set and learn
> Perl for Hopeless Programmers. Views?

Oddly, I've started using it more again. There's a lot that's changed in
the last 10 years. Moose is a very nice object framework (ok, meta-class
framework), the testing infrastructure has a lot going for it and you
still have more useful bits and pieces on cpan than you can shake a
stick at. There are three main weak points with Perl at the moment, and
they're all related to its age:
 1. Perception - can't be cool, it's older than most undergrads
 2. Deployment - we need a larger set of standard modules and it needs
to be simpler to install more without root access and a compiler.
 3. Too damn much choice - need a gold/silver/bronze rating for cpan
(there is a review system, but it's taking time to build up a clear
pattern of usage)

The problem for new users is that Perl is no longer *much better* than
other scripting languages.

-- 
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd
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