5 ms·
The real question is whether a programming language that has lost traction, mindshare, and focus ever gained it back? It's probably no coincidence that Python's
by Saad_M 7y ago
The real question is whether a programming language that has lost traction, mindshare, and focus ever gained it back? It's probably no coincidence that Python's rise was at the same time of Perl's stagnation.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI think what happened to Perl is that its approach (puns, whimsy, ornate symbols, multiple ways to do the same thing) suddenly became extremely unfashionable with the rise in popularity of more clean and simple languages like Python and Ruby (although Ruby had a much more whimsical US community in the past, it's not part of the core language community in the same way.) Almost overnight everything about Perl seemed very old fashioned. Maybe their style of programming will suddenly become popular again? But doesn't look like it's coming soon.
- brnt 7y agoI don't think those things became unfashionable, it was just not what people who were until then (late 90ies) not programmers were looking for. They were looking to get shit done (tm) and verbosity (Java) or clarity (Python) suited what they were looking for much better than Perl (a clever language for clever programmers).
- s_kilk 7y agoI think that's a large part of it, yes, but a lot of folks saw the demented weirdness of perl and were (rightfully) turned off. And by that time there were sane alternatives available.
- Scarbutt 7y agoWell, Ruby has Rails and it is still declining very fast, it's very hard to seen it come up back again, Perl has no chance.
- joelbluminator 7y agoDon't think Ruby is declining anymore tbh, neither is PHP. They were once hugely popular and then shrank back to moderate usage; any data to back up that Ruby is losing usage over the last 3-5 years?
- Scarbutt 7y agohttps://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2019/3 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2019/3 Unlike Java/C#, I would say github is a good indicator for Ruby.
- chrisseaton 7y agoDoes that show it's declining? It's proportion of pull requests, not absolute pull requests. Ruby could still be growing if the whole system is growing.
- threwawasy1228 7y agoI would say yes, but only in the form of a new language with differences from the older forms. Scheme -> Racket Common Lisp -> Clojure ML -> Haskell If perl followed this format and did a rebrand that is essentially the same thing, they would be more likely to pick up traction. Perl just in the name itself gives me a certain connotation. Typically the older variants of languages for the most part die off, while the newly branded ones gain traction, but carrying on the same basic mission. This last one is particularly sad to me personally the Standard ML ecosystem is still to this day incredibly robust and production-tier, and yet it is very much a dead language.
- nicwolff 7y agoThat's pretty much what Raku is – a substantially new language, with a new name but the same mission as Perl.
- gmfawcett 7y agoI don't understand the lineage that you've charted here. ML is older than all the others; Haskell is older than Clojure and PLT/Racket; Common Lisp is older than Racket/PLT, etc. The arrows don't make any sense.
- rwallace 7y agoI think he's charted three separate lineages, with no cross-lineage relationships implied.
- threwawasy1228 7y agoIt was meant to be 3 separate lines, I made a formatting mistake that I can no longer edit.
- gmfawcett 7y agoAhh... thank you for explaining. :)
- didymospl 7y agoPython is actually a good example of such language. I feel like it started to stagnate around a decade ago(slow adoption of Python 3, poor packaging, Ruby on Rails winning over Django etc) but then it has reinvented itself in the area of ML/AI. Similarly but less impressively, Java 8 has slowed down the rate of flow of Java devs to newer languages.