[Ultimatt]

Ok then your definition is corporate ecosystem then? Perl in general is hardly the stuff of scaled soft eng. in a mega corp. It wasn't designed for that, but to empower an individual to be highly productive quickly. With that in mind the ecosystem is super healthy, even by your definition. I'm more shocked Python has managed to bridge that gap, but so did Pascal at one point so I guess designed to be a teaching language wins out!

[jasode]

>It wasn't designed for that,

And I'm not "penalizing" Perl for that.

>I'm more shocked Python has managed to bridge that gap,

That's more to my point. Old languages like C++ and Python keep getting rejuvenated as 1st class drivers of innovation but Perl (the language -- not the cpan) keep getting ignored.

I was surprised when Google chose Python as one of the 1st class languages for its new Tensorflow instead of a new language like Julia. I do understand why they chose Python but nevertheless was surprised.

Same for C++. It gets rejuvenated in things like graphics programming (NVIDIA's CUDA SDK is C++ not Perl). And when Bitcoin showed up in 2009, it's canonical client was C++ not Perl. Also, updates to C++ via C++14 and C++17 were discussions that turned into reality whereas Perl 6's long development became a running joke about vaporware.

Perl5 and Perl6 don't really have any new stories like that where it gets rejuvenated. Therefore, it keeps dropping off everyone's radar as "legacy".

Whether Perl programmers are highly productive with Perl isn't really the issue.

[kbp]

> Same for C++. It gets rejuvenated in things like graphics programming (NVIDIA's CUDA SDK is C++ not Perl). And when Bitcoin showed up in 2009, it's canonical client was C++ not Perl.

Perl is not competing with C++; they're entirely different languages with entirely different usecases. Comparing it to Python is reasonable; comparing it to C++ is silly.

> Also, updates to C++ via C++14 and C++17 were discussions that turned into reality whereas Perl 6's long development became a running joke about vaporware.

Newer C++ versions are more akin to newer Perl 5 versions like 5.26 (May 2017), 5.24 (May 2016) etc. Perl 6 is a new language using some of the same ideas; comparing Perl 5 and Perl 6 is like comparing C++ and C#, not C++ and C++17.

[jasode]

>Perl is not competing with C++; they're entirely different languages with entirely different usecases.

Yes, I understand that C++ does not compete with Perl. My point is the rejuvenation stories, not the runtime or use case differences.

I use a utility every day called ExifTool[1] that's 100% Perl source code or very close to it. However, ExifTool does not keep Perl at the top of mind the way Tensorflow brings Python relevancy to a new generation of programmers.

[1] https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

[kbp]

> Yes, I understand that C++ does not compete with Perl. My point is the rejuvenation stories

Well, the way C++ had new versions released in 2017 and 2014, Perl 5 had new versions released in 2017 and 2016; what stagnation are you demonstrating? You said "updates to C++ via C++14 and C++17 were discussions that turned into reality"; and the same thing happened with updates to Perl 5 (which is the language "Perl" is usually shorthand for). Perl 6 is an entirely different language, it, along with languages like Ruby, compares to Perl 5 the same way C# and Rust compare to C++.

[jasode]

>what stagnation are you demonstrating?

Mindshare.

I thought it was clear that my rejuvenation examples were not about point releases or size of cpan but rejuvenating the mindshare of programmers.

Instead of my words getting misinterpreted and we keep going around in circles, let's try to bypass that and turn the question around:

What is your explanation of why Perl has declined in mindshare and is one of the most disliked languages in programmer's survey?

[kbp]

My point was that the fact that C++ (like Perl) has had multiple updates in the past few years, and that Nvidia chose C++ instead of Perl as the primary language for an API are not evidence of Perl's decline. Perl 5 receives more frequent updates than C++, and C++ is being used where it makes sense and where Perl wouldn't have been used even when it was the new hotness. How is that evidence that Perl has fallen off?

I'm not saying that Perl's popularity hasn't greatly declined, I'm just saying that the evidence you're offering for it isn't evidence.