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[return to "Perl's decline was cultural"]
1. mmastr+53[view] [source] 2025-12-06 18:11:10
>>todsac+(OP)
In fairness, Perl died because it was just not a good language compared to others that popped up after its peak. Sometimes people just move to the better option.
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2. nine_k+c5[view] [source] 2025-12-06 18:26:32
>>mmastr+53
Perl is a great language, the way Scala and Haskell are great: as openly experimental languages, they tried interesting, unorthodox approaches, with varied success. "More than one way to do it" is Perl's motto, because of its audacious experimentation ethos, I'd say.

Perl is not that good a language though for practical purposes. The same way, a breadboard contraption is not what you want to ship as your hardware product, but without it, and the mistakes made and addressed while tinkering with it, the sleek consumer-grade PCB won't be possible to design.

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3. morshu+6b[view] [source] 2025-12-06 19:11:00
>>nine_k+c5
Couldn't they have figured out one decent way to do things before releasing features to all users? I tried Scala for a bit then decided it was complicated for no good reason.

Idk about Haskell, but I used Erlang which is also purely functional. No matter how long I used it and tried to appreciate its elegance, it became clear this isn't a convenient way to do things generally. But it was designed well, unlike Scala.

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4. dtauze+qn[view] [source] 2025-12-06 21:02:20
>>morshu+6b
If you wanted to write a quick on off script then using magic variables,etc made sense. Writing something you’ll keep? Don’t use those. When Perl 5 introduced references they could have simplified the syntax though.
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