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Perl A Ground Breaking Language?

by bsb (Priest)
on Jan 09, 2004 at 01:57 UTC ( [id://320000]=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

GroundBreakingLanguages is a wiki list of languages that represented a "new ways of looking at how to interact with computers" (according the authors' discussion)

Perl is listed in the almost there list for auto-vivification and "if" as a statment modifier.

Can we do better? Maybe function call context-sensitivity?

(http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jan 09, 2004 at 05:47 UTC

    In the generic sense, the thing that (IMO) makes perl a ground breaking langauge it that it tries to support most of the facilities available on it's original target platform, whilst reducing the complexity (and typing) involved in using them; especially the most commonly used of those facilties.

    To achieve this, required avoiding the dogma's of purity, orthogonality and elegance. The vision to avoid the NIH syndrome by adopting and adapting useful facilities, features and idioms from other langauges, platforms and cultures and making them it's own.

    The resulting, slightly messy, slightly confusing, somewhat inelegant, often terse language structure owes it's syntax to the premise that doing frequently used constructs should be quick to write and quick to process. Less frequently used constructs often requiring more syntax & requiring more effort. Often called the Huffman principle.

    By eshewing the need to stick to any rigid overarching design principles, in favour doing what works, means that you get a language that depite having more than a few inconsistances and rough edges, is far and away the most productive langauge for those that can adapt to it's foibles.

    My great hope is that the next version will look beyond the focus of it's original platform and show the same willingness to adopt and adapt from the wider circle of platforms and languages whilst retaining the balance between functionality and usability.


    Examine what is said, not who speaks.
    "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
    "Think for yourself!" - Abigail
    Timing (and a little luck) are everything!

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jan 09, 2004 at 02:31 UTC

    I don't think gee-whiz new language features are necessary to establish perl's pose with a gold-painted shovel. Its preeminence in text processing, its affinity to natural language, the CPAN libraries, and its wide scope of application from low-level system calls to TheDamian's opus all establish that.

    Web polls are a lousy way to obtain truth.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

      Web polls are a lousy way to obtain truth.

      Poppycock! Clearly you fail to appreciate The Line of Truth ;^)

      I would add to your list the observation that more than any other language I've ever worked with (okay, only C derivatives mostly) Perl allows the programmer to develop idioms of his/her own and to generate a set of (hopefully consistent) norms with which to write and evaluate code. To me, Perl is interesting because accomplishing a task isn't a matter of appeasing a compiler, but figuring what I want to say and how I want to say it. True, this is why people complain about Perl code being "write only", however I'm not inclined to fix the problem of unmaintainable code by forcing everyone to use an intentionally dumbed down language (<cough>Java</cough>).


      "The dead do not recognize context" -- Kai, Lexx

      Perl is a ground breaking language, and I never douted that. Perl totally changed the face of scripting language, changed what scripting language can do. Perl is performance, not only that Perl is fast, but also Perl allows you to develop your application more rapidly.

      "Web polls are a lousy way to obtain truth."

      I 100% agree with Zaxo. For technical ideas, you don't sanity check or judge them by the number of people support them, but by their qualities.

      Comparing with other types of polls, web poll falls in the lousiest area, as the majority of people who visit a certain web site usually already have their mind set solidly established, and their oppionions are usually biased. You come to here ask people whether Perl is better, or Java is better, which one will the majority vote? If you go to a Java site, ask the same question, you will definitely get the opposite answer.

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jan 09, 2004 at 09:14 UTC
    Perl is listed in the almost there list for auto-vivification and "if" as a statment modifier.

    I'm afraid using "if" as a statement modifier was available in several other languages, e.g. Pop-11, before Perl existed. So that's one off the list :-)

    Perl's not really much of a language innovator - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a language feature-aggregator and populariser.

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 09, 2004 at 06:07 UTC

    Nothing in Perl is groundbreaking in and of itself. But, Larry did manage to wrangle a number of language features and styles together and synthesize them into a language that, rather against the grain of minimalism and orthogonality, is big, somewhat messy, and incredibly useful. Not a language for the computer scientist, a language for the working programmer. The *groundbreaking* aspect isn't anything in the Perl language, but Larry's decision to *not* break new ground with yet another one-trick suburb or a cool new revitalizing Mall, and instead focused on gluing the infrastructure of the existing neighborhoods into something more livable. (how's that for stretching a metaphor?).

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by zentara (Archbishop) on Jan 09, 2004 at 16:01 UTC
    I can't find the URL. but I remember a story from a few years back, where there was some sort of programming competition at some big university. Perl was not allowed to be used in the competition, because it was too easy to win with it. I'd say that makes it "a ground-breaking language".

    I pulled this out of a "groups.google.com" search for "perl programming competition":

    Perl "Too Good" This is a true story. Names have not been changed. UCLA's Computer Science Undergraduate Association regularly hosts its programming competition. Contestants are given six complex problems and have three hours to write programs to solve as many of the problems as possible. In 1997, the rules stated that any programming language could be used so long as you solved the problem, so then-undergraduate Keith Chiem entered and used Perl. Keith did not merely win, he conquered. He solved five of the six problems in the three hours allotted. The second-place two-person team solved only three problems. They, needless to say, were not using Perl. But if you're a UCLA undergraduate contemplating entering the contest and using Perl, don't bother. After Keith's conquest, Perl was banned from the contest. You've got to admire a language that is banned because it makes problems too easy to solve. These days, Keith is a sysadmin at Yahoo! Inc., and is wondering what to do with the copy of Visual C++ that was his prize.

      It turns out that this was an ACM competiton and Perl (and high-level languages in general) wasn't allowed in the rules to begin with.

      The next year they simply clarified the rules. So it's a nice story, but somewhat flawed.

      This of course doesn't change the fact that Perl (and Python and others of their kind) is an incredible language to get things done.

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 10, 2004 at 21:46 UTC

    Perl didn't really break ground. Perl has never been a pioneer. Perl is the railway that provided common folk with a feasible opportunity to travel close to the frontier.

    In this sense, Perl6 is shaping up to be a worthy inheritant of its heritage. While I dislike aspects of it, it's the only "agile" language effort that evidently tries to bring ideas deeply explored in theory but hardly used in practice to the common codeslave's desk. Every other language seems stuck rehashing concepts that we've been using almost since the dawn of computing.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jan 11, 2004 at 16:08 UTC
    If I was to cite any idea as being truly new in Perl, I'd cite the various regular expression extensions. Which are useful enough that everyone else now advertises that they have them as well.
Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by xenchu (Friar) on Jan 10, 2004 at 16:22 UTC
    If you want to talk to someone who knows a little about Perl, talk to me. I know as little as anyone in the Monastery. However, struggling programmer though I am, I did take a look at the GBL site.

    While some good points about individual languages were made, essentially it was just an opinion poll; no experience necessary. Besides, there was no prize in the Crackerjack(t) box. What does Perl get for being among the ground-breaking languages? Better reputation? More money? A trip to Hollywood? Reputation, IMO, is word-of-mouth from the people who use programming languages. Not from people who vote in opinion polls.

    Opinion polls are for things like the Ten Most Beautiful and Twelve Best Elvis Movies.

    xenchu


    The Needs of the World and my Talents run parallel to infinity.
Re: Perl A Ground Breaking Language?
by bsb (Priest) on Jan 11, 2004 at 21:59 UTC
    I don't know my language archaeology but what about:
    • Taint mode.
    • tie - alternative implementation of builtin types.
    • floating point version numbers (ok, not so good).
    • pick your delimiters qq//, q//, qw//, qx//, m//, s///...
    • sigils, not just for evaluating/interpolating but as a different namespace.
    I agree with the posts above, that Perl's value is in providing a rich choice of features from diverse languages and combining them in a way to easily get things done.

    I think Perl6 will probably rate as truly innovative, in a number of ways. Grammar/regex integration and junctions are my picks.

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