Why I Left Perl

This doesn't make much sense. If anything, I'd argue that the Perl community is taking a page out of Python's book with their recent emphasis on readable code, best practices and things like "use strict" over the freewheeling hackery that formed Perl's reputation. I'm not sure what I'd recommend to the author if they prefer a less prescriptive community, but it certainly wouldn't be either Python or Ruby. Maybe something from the Lisp family, like Racket?

On a side note, the very things that the author complains about are the same things that have been motivating me to learn Perl recently. My previous experience with it had been exposure to badly-written sysadmin scripts and clever one-liners. However, the stuff I've seen recently (particularly chromatic's "Modern Perl" book [1] and the Enlightened Perl Organisation [2]) has shown me that it's possible to write Perl that's downright elegant, without resorting to the ugly mess that many people think of when they hear "Perl script".

[1] http://www.onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/index.html

[2] http://www.enlightenedperl.org/

The good news is, you don't have to type "use strict" anymore; it's the default if you opt to declare Perl 5.11 or higher as the minimum for your module or script.

People seem to hate typing "my" to declare a variable, but that's fine. I appreciate the number of times that's caught bugs for me, and I appreciate the clarity of scoping it allows for. I never really figured out scoping in Python, because you never declare variables. In Python, you could write:

   def foo():
      def reset():
         x = 0
      def inc():
         x += 1
      def print():
         print x

And it would compile, but not be what you mean. In Perl, you'd write:

   sub foo {
       my $reset = sub { my $x; $x = 0 }
       my $inc   = sub { my $x; $x++ }
       ...
   }

and know exactly what's going on because you had to explicitly declare $x. You can instantly tell that the Perl is broken. But the Python looks like it works (but doesn't). That, to me, is a big deal.

Of course, it doesn't actually matter because you're not supposed to program like that in Python. But if you chose to anyway, ...

I remember when I felt as he does about strict.

I also remember the day that I made a trivial error that strict would have instantly caught, and took out Bloomberg's ftp server as a result. That was also the day that I was converted.

It is important to know what strict does and doesn't do. It is not a panacea. But that said, it is a very good default to have on. But most days it catches problems for me, and they are usually real bugs. Keeping it quiet involves very little work. And my experience seems typical.

I believe him when he says that he has lots of working scripts that don't use it. However I also believe that a habit of using it would improve his productivity. And based on past experience, I'd be willing to bet that if he put strict on those scripts, he'd find and fix at least one real bug. (And probably a lot more.)

Given how useful strict is, why shouldn't it be a default "best practice" that gets recommended? This is not nagging. This is sharing useful information that makes people's life better. I've had people thank me for it.

First sentence: "OK, I suppose I really haven’t left Perl"

It's a couple thousand word memoir, about 1/2 comprised of reasons he's not using to "leave Perl," before telling us that it's Perl people who bug him. He needs to get together with that "no semicolons in Javascript" guy in another HN post.

I have met several avid Perl developers in my line of work and at conferences that have been abundantly helpful. IRC users, on the other hand, can be somewhat of a disaster. I was working a script and couldn't find in the documentation of how to set a custom error code with "die". I decided to ask in #perl on freenode, but I was constantly "trolled" with some of the users spamming "Have you considered reading the documentation?". One of these users did in fact answer my question (just use exit), seconds before I was banned. When I pm'd the user who banned me, he explained to me that I had "not answered his question whether I had answered the documentation". Heh.

Ironically, the user that banned me runs a blog whose most recent blog post was regarding "Exit statuses and how $? works". So I guess my question wasn't so stupid after all.

I have heard that #perl on OFTC is slightly more sane and helpful, but can't attest for that personally.

It's just me or it's really strange that he's "moved" from Perl to Python because he doesn't like the fact that there's a preferred (by some people) way of doing things. Which, again, for some people, it's the "advantage" of Python, where there should be "one true/simple way" of doing things which, AFAIK, is summarized at PEP8.

Edit: grammar correction.

OK, so I love Python.

But you are going to find people in the Python world telling you to abide by PEP8. And saying that you should be using virtualenv. And saying that you should not use (module-level) globals. And saying that you should be using various checking tools. And the checking tools may say annoying things (some of which will be good points about your code).

And I'm kind of one of those people, as well; not saying that there aren't reasons to break a rule, or that it instantly makes your code crap if you do, but I understand these arguments.

And a vocal number of those on Python IRC channels tend to be dicks to newbies or people with unusual ideas.

So I guess I would question whether Python is going to give you what you want. I can't speak much to Ruby's culture.

Use the tools you like which make your life better, and if it makes your life better then ignore other people's unsolicited opinions on the internet and just do your thing.

> “All variables must be declared my or our. That you would even consider doing otherwise reveals what a despicable coder you are.”

> This was stupid advice, but it was common. Perl’s defaults were as much a part of the language as regular expressions and were just as useful. I’d written dozens of scripts that relied, for example, on variables springing to life when first referenced, and they’d all been working perfectly for years. It’s not hackwork to take advantage of a language’s documented features.

The point here is not it will break the script but maintaining the script becomes a nightmare. that's why it's a bad practice. Clarity should always be favored over magic in programming.

The only valid reasons to "leave" Perl apply equally to Python. Sorry, but it's true.

Compilers are good enough for type systems to be advantages, now.