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by 0xbadcafebee 1378 days ago
I still use Perl whenever I need to get something complex done quickly. Whether it's the handy command-line switches and features for easier one-liners, or just easier stream text processing, or easier external command execution, or the huge library of modules that often support things Python doesn't, Perl is my "fuck it, I just need to get this done" language.

I can't wait for the day that programming languages as a concept are obsolete. It feels exactly like hand-tool woodworking. I would love to stop building tables and chairs over and over, instead just buy them from Code IKEA.

1 comments

For me it’s any kind of text processing; especially code generation for some one-off task, like churning out SQL or bash scripts/shell commands. Faster than doing it by hand. __END__ is one of my best friends because I can dump the input data right into the script. On the rare occasion I am irked whatever language I’m working in does not have format/write, which comes from the Fortran tradition iirc.