Re: [Administrivia] On ruby and contrib/

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 7, 2013, 19:21 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s1+ax-Z=CRsSFEZHYKrBA1voQFv1=Vso9RkWDwEqhZR-A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1306061308100.29361@nftneq.ynat.uz>

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:19 PM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> On Fri, 7 Jun 2013, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
>
>> David Lang wrote:
>>>
>>> Perl use may or may not be declining (depending on how you measure it),
>>> but
>>> are you really willing to take on the task of re-writing everything
>>> that's
>>> in Perl into another language and force all developers of scripts to
>>> learn
>>> that other language? what's the ROI of this?
>>
>>
>> Let's not talk hypotheticals.  git-svn.perl (+ perl/SVN/*.pl) is
>> absolutely massive.  It's an incredibly useful tool in that it
>> actually works, and that there is nothing replacing it in the
>> foreseeable future.  This monster was written almost entirely by one
>> brilliant person, and nobody is going to rewrite it.  We don't start a
>> huge discussion about what languages are "approved" before accepting
>> such a contribution: if the contributor wants to write something in a
>> dominant language (Perl in this case), and it's going to be useful, we
>> merge it.  End of story.
>
>
> Well, Felipe is saying that Perl is dieing and we should re-write everything
> that exists in Perl to Ruby.

No, I said we should try to move away from Perl. Move stuff to C, shell scripts, and yeah, Ruby.

Show 6 quoted lines

>> Why are we discussing something that is indeterminate?  It is
>> impossible to foresee the future, but that is no reason to freeze
>> _present_ development.
>
> and it's not a reason to throw away existing stuff based on the argument
> that Perl is dieing

Who said anything about throwing away code?

Show 15 quoted lines

>> Nobody claimed that "press coverage" is a good metric.  We can only
>> talk about facts, and Felipe already showed you a TIOBE index graph.
>> If you have overwhelming _evidence_ that Ruby is a weak language that
>> will die soon, share it: otherwise, I see no value in this discussion.
>
>
> TIOBE index graph is "press coverage" as far as I'm concerned.
>
> I'm not saying that Ruby in particular has a fatal flaw, I'm just
> questioning the "Perl is dead, re-write everything in Ruby" mantra.
>
> The language that you choose to use when writing a new application is
> related to things related to that type of application.
>
> Ruby is not an extremely common language for sysadmins to use.

Who said we need a language commonly used by sysadmins for our Git core?

> Perl remains a common language for these sorts of tasks, even if it's not
> used for user visible applications.

Ruby is pretty much a replacement for Perl. For every task Perl is good, Ruby also is. Ruby's syntax even borrows from Perl.

The difference is; Ruby is better for many more tasks that suck in Perl.

> Arguing that Perl is dieing, we need to abandon it is just wrong.

Straw man. Nobody is arguing that.

I said we should try to avoid it, not abandon it immediately.

-- 
Felipe Contreras