Perl 5.12.3 released
dev.perl.org
dev.perl.org
When I went to see the state of perl a few months back I noticed the language is maturing, CPAN is still strong.
I think they have a PR problem.
The real issue is that a new programming language can be quite an investment. Some people learn lots of languages but many people actually stick with just one. Perl has nothing compelling over the other languages. You don't really lose anything buy picking e.g. Python or Ruby instead. So people tend to pick a language based on what cool new thing is written in it and that cool new thing is never in perl. Perl always rushes in later with a "me too" copy but it's never where a new breakthrough happens.
I think the GP was actually trying to say that the traction is missing for an otherwise nice and mature/stable infrastructure. A couple of "shiny" projects that boldly host with a powered by perl on their page might bring in fresh blood..
As a community, we tend to like to really think about things before implementing them - which means that while new ideas might turn up in perl a bit later than in other places, they tend to turn up in a well thought out way that we can confidently maintain backwards compatibility with over time.
When you're writing code that may still be in production in five or ten years, this tends to be an advantage.
I'm a perl5 hacker at heart and intend to continue to be.
The latest version of perl5 is version 12.3, released rather recently.
The websites for both languages now make this clear, but we'll probably need to rename them both to "-something- perl" for people to stop being confused by the names. Maybe in the next year or so.
As someone who worked at a shop that migrated from python/Zope to java/hibernate/GWT during the "zope 3 WTF?" days, I can attest that the confusion created by poor naming choices, and the lack of clarity in product roadmaps, was indeed a factor in deciding to migrate entirely away from Zope.
The first is that Perl 5 (the mature language) suffered greatly from the premature announcement of the Perl 6 project, more than ten years ago, which still hasn't shipped anything as stable and mature as, say, Python 3. (Several years ago, someone at my company showed up to work carrying a book entitled "Perl 6 Today". I asked where he'd gotten the time machine.)
The second is that if you look at blog posts and the like from inside the Perl community, such as it now is, you get the impression that it's the kind of crowd that thinks they're smarter than everyone else because no one else gets their inside jokes. Which comes from the top --- Larry Wall seems to think he's really clever when he justifies some of Perl's more dubious features by pointing out that natural languages do that too. But natural language has a full human intelligence at the other end sorting out the ambiguities, and even then, we still sometimes get it wrong. "Rakudo Star" is not that smart, much less Perl 5.
--
I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. 'Lie down, lie down!' the people cried. 'The great machine is history!' My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so.
Howard W. Campbell, Jr. "Reflections on Not Participating in Current Events"
Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features.
One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)).
As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package.
[1] http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html
edit: this appears to be proper delta: http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5123delta.po...
Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.3:
[...], Father Chrysostomos, [...] !!!
Good to see Father Chrysostomos cranking out the code in between delivering presents around the world with his team of flying reindeer. Um. Seems like there's at least one Joycean nerd Perl hacker out there, I seem to remember that this is a coinage from near the beginning of Ulysses and it translates from ancient greek into modern English as Golden Mouth?
From Wikipedia: James Joyce's novel Ulysses includes a character named Mulligan who brings 'Chrysostomos' into another character's mind because Mulligan's gold-stopped teeth and his gift of the gab earn him the title which St. John Chrysostom's preaching earned him, 'golden-mouthed':[45] Chrysostomos also refers to Stephen, the independent and exiled genius: "He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos."
The original John Chrysostom died in 407 apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom
If you want to know the enhancements from 5.10.x to 5.12.x, see http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5120delta.p...