hello,
I got into learning Perl because some people on IRC said so. at first I wasn’t interested in Perl because I already know Python and Python can almost do anything Perl can. I still gave it a try to kinda have some experience learning new language. I am on chapter 3 right now and would make another post about my progress.
A bit too late. 20 years ago this would be great. (I started 12 years ago, used it for couple of hobby projects.)
For the language itself, maybe. But never discourage people from learning something new. He seems to be excited and has motivation. There are also lot of legacy code, which would never get ported or maintained if nobody learns the language anymore, only a few old people at that point (look what happens to COBOL).
Yeah, COBOL schools and boot camps have started to pop up
I learend it in the 90s, and was working on a large Perl codebase 2005 and a couple of years forward. And 20 years, it still started to feel dated, and 15 years ago it was just so out dated it hurt. So, starting to learn Perl 20 years ago would not have been great :) However, the things making Perl horrible, is pretty much threre in Python also with the addition of significant whitespace… so technically, going from Python to Perl might actually be a step in the right direction… Now, if you excuse me, I will hide behinde this huge rock for a while to let the incoming projectiles settle.
I won’t say “better” but Perl 6 is … interesting. It’s not clear what version you’re using.
I suggest Haskell as your next language instead of Perl, since it will change how you think. https://learnyouahaskell.com is a good place to start.
When people say perl, they normally mean Perl 5. Perl 6 is now called Raku and is considered a different language.
I’ve been brainwashed into finding Elixir interesting due to how it handles parallelism and good it’s supposed to be for live debugging. (According to ~3 talks I found on youtube)
some people on IRC
Well there’s your problem! (just kidding)
Honestly though I don’t know why you would pick Perl unless you want to learn an obscure language that is both painful to read and write. May $deity have mercy on your soul.
Ah, write only code ;) I was an enjoyer pre python.
I worked with Perl for years, and I don’t recommend it for a beginner. There are just too many idiosyncrasies that belong specifically to the language that you’d be better off with Python for learning the basics.
I’m also not really sold on that book, which from the code samples looks really old. I’d recommend two books: Modern Perl and Perl Best Practices.
Edit: I’d also recommend working in Go but potentially the way i/o intersects with interfaces makes it a bit more challenging.
I’m fascinated by Raku myself.
I was about to start learning Perl in a proper way, but always decided against it. I just can’t find a good reason for myself to write Perl code. Unless you want to read or edit others Perl code, what is the reason to learn it? GNU+Bash and Python are often enough for me.
So why learning and using Perl in modern age and day as a newcomer to the language? Look, I’m not negative here, just asking honest question. Because I am actually searching for good reasons to learn Perl.
Well, Perl is great for small scripts that works on large texts, that you process with regex. I still use Perl from time to time, for that kind of scripts. Also commandline, instead of awk/sed…
