Re: [Administrivia] On ruby and contrib/

From: Charles McGarvey <chazmcgarvey@brokenzipper.com>
Date: Jun 6, 2013, 20:41 UTC
Message-ID: <51B0F3F6.5040507@brokenzipper.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s3zuDPTApPvnaC0bzqmAUkRRwePZDRL4syB=tM3d6eiBA@mail.gmail.com>

On 06/06/2013 01:46 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 2:26 AM, demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Good thing you are being objective and leaving out the Python 3.0
>> mess, the long legacy of backwards compatibility in the Perl
>> community, the active community behind it, its extensive portability
>> support, and fail to mention the lack of an equivalent to CPAN. We
>> wouldn't want facts to get in the way of a personal bias would we?
> 
> None of that has anything to do with Perl's popularity.
> 
>> Just thought I'd push back on the FUD. People have been saying Perl is
>> going away for decades...
> 
> Perl has been going away for the last decade [1], and will continue to
> go away. Perl is going away, and that an undeniable fact, and if you
> are not interested in discussing on the basis of reality, I'm not
> interested in discussing with you.
> 
> [1] http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/images/tpci_trends.png

The linchpin of your argument is that Perl is dying. Let's assume that the TIOBE index is a reliable basis for making business decisions--it's not, but let's pretend--the graph you linked to doesn't even seem to support your conclusion (or am I missing something?). It looks like Perl's popularity has pretty much been constant for at least two years. It's apparently not increasing in popularity, but this isn't an electrocardiogram (i.e. flat-lining is not dead or even dying). The same graph shows that Ruby's popularity also hasn't changed very much since 2007 after its initial surge.

Now, it's probably too off-topic to pick apart TIOBE's methodology here, but suffice it to say that, like any trend indicator, it's only as useful as your knowledge of its limitations, and this has been discussed enough elsewhere.

It's true that Perl isn't soon going to win any trendiness awards, but the same reasons that made Perl a good choice for git so many years ago are still there and then some. You would probably also be surprised at the number of new kids learning Perl.

I guess I just denied the "undeniable fact" that Perl is going away, so maybe I'm one of those with whom you do not want to discuss this, but, for my part, I am willing to consider other evidence for the claim. As I pointed out, the evidence shown so far (one reference to the TIOBE index) isn't nearly enough to settle the matter. I also apologize for dragging this out if this thread is judged to not be worth a whole lot.

-- 
Charles McGarvey