[jbert]

Python, perl and ruby are roughly the same language. The differences between them are primarily cultural, rather than technical.

I suspect the reason perl flourished here was a combination of luck and the cultural fit. Culture here includes the newbie-friendly online help (e.g. perlmonks), the ease of "publish and re-use components" (CPAN).

[adorton]

Also, remember that when the project started, Python and Ruby didn't exist yet. Perl still wasn't the only dynamic scripting language on the block, but it probably the most mature and best-suited to this problem domain.

I wonder if perl would still be used if the project was started today.

[c1sc0]

Perl was the only language on the block with strong built-in text-processing capabilities. For many a biologist the Camel book was the only programming book they read before moving on to solve real biological problems instead of fiddling with programs.

[elblanco]

It's also performant enough that it wasn't worth the time to learn a faster performing language.

[hackermom]

Without going off on a limb: back then, if you knew Perl, you knew C.

[hartror]

I learnt Perl and used it on projects long before I learnt C.

[sprout]

From the bit of Bioinformatics work I did in college, that actually seemed a problem rather than a boon. Genes are not ascii sequences, and Perl is not really made to manipulate them.

Perl is however an excellent scripting language, and though it's ugly, it's just as easy as Python to pick up and use. Thus its danger.

[elblanco]

Can you elaborate a bit on "genes are not ascii sequences"? My understanding is that genes are regularly computer stored as ascii sequences e.g. GATTACA.

[sprout]

Yes. I think I came off as more negative towards Perl than I meant to. The point is that they are far simpler than ascii. They are quaternary data, and as such Regexes aren't really a good tool for modifying them any more than Regexes are a good tool for modifying raw binary, even if your binary is stored as a string of ascii characters.

There are other facilities of Perl though, in general its quick scripting, that make it as good a tool as any other, just so you don't get sucked into the idea that regexes are a good tool here.

[elblanco]

Thanks for the reply. That's definitely true. I'd imagine a gene sequencing system using two bit encoding would allow for the gene data to be more compact and more performant in many cases.

[draegtun]

Python & Ruby did exist however their VMs were no where near as reliable and fast as Perl at that time. Another viable option would have been tcl but like you say Perl was probably better suited.

I wonder if perl would still be used if the project was started today.

I think so. But would that be perl5 or perl6? :)