Re: [Administrivia] On ruby and contrib/

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 6, 2013, 18:16 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s3JZh6sn77Tz9gaRZe2or-pbrCrHUhbxQysA1gQY0AzUw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1306060904100.13204@nftneq.ynat.uz>

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 11:09 AM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:

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> On Thu, 6 Jun 2013, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>> In the end my point remains unchanged; Perl is declining, so it would
>> be wise for the future to use another scripting language instead.
>
>
> 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?

But that's exactly what we are asking the newer generations of developers; to learn another language. Fewer and fewer new contributors will come with knowledge of Perl.

> What are the odds that the 'newer' language that you pick is going to pull a
> "python 3" on you?

Ruby 2 speaks volumes on that front.

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> There have been a very large number of scripting languages show up, make a
> lot of press, and then fade in favor of other languages while Perl has
> continued. It's not the sexy languange nowdays, but it's there, reliable,
> and used so heavily that there's really no chance of it dissapearing in the
> forseable future.

Yet it's declining, more and more every year. And the more the time goes by, the more we hurt ourselves.

-- 
Felipe Contreras