blogs.perl.org

If it helps, I'm a real hacker :) Here's some of my open-source code: https://github.com/Ovid

Here's some more of my open-source code: http://search.cpan.org/~ovid/

Here's my tech blog where I give advice to other hackers: http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/

I'm a hacker trying to help other hackers live their dreams and I give freely back to the community.

> This is "Who's hiring" thread and it has always been a place for companies to post their own direct-hire positions.

I realize that you disagree with recruiters being here. The lead paragraph for the "Who is Hiring" threads says the following:

> Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.

I've never seen anything which states "no recruiters". We specifically looked for that because we didn't want to violate any TOS or alienate those we are trying to help.

I'm sorry you disagree with how we've handled this, but we honestly do try to help people live anywhere in the world. The fact that I've also been writing a blog helping people do this for years should help back that up.

When candidates contact us with their CV and express an interest in the jobs, we immediately tell them who is hiring and why. It's hard enough for those who dream of living abroad to find companies willing to help them. Why restrict…

> Not by me. I make no assumptions on the matter at all, the entire topic never even crosses my mind...This is a common complaint? I've never even noticed the gender of someone contributing an article. Who are these people who tally these things up?

Anextio was pointing out the the tech industry is sexist, not trying to call you in particular sexist. It's cool that you make no assumptions if that's the case (although, to be honest I find that a bit unbelievable since you think the tech industry doesn't suffer from sexism), but that doesn't change the tech industry.

> And you call me sexist? And how do you know if the author is male or female anyway?

There are links (e.g. http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-apparently-this-is-creepy.html) that show that the author is male.

> You are aware that discriminating for women on good things is just as sexist as doing it for bad things, right?

I don't see where you got the idea that anextio was doing anything other than pointing out that women in the tech community don't get the credit they deserve.

> Because that's how English grammar works.

So it's suddenly not sexist to assume that the author of an anonymous blog is male? (Just to clarify: I don't mean sexist as in 'I'm out to systematically repress all women!', I mean the follow-the-leader sexist as in 'it's okay to x because everyone else does it.') 'He', unfortunately, isn't a gender-neutral pronoun.

> I don't get why gender even matters for these…

> To turn the question on its head, why should anyone choose Perl over the alternatives? I honestly have never seen a reason to switch.

Was that the implication of the original statement? When you said you didn't see much reason for a new project to be started in Perl, I took that as any new project, even in a shop that has prior Perl experience, not a project where you are specifically looking for something different than our prior language.

Indeed, if you are already using one of Perl/Python/Ruby, I'm not sure I see a reason to switch from any one of those to any other.

If on the other hand you actually meant "When starting a new project, I see no reason to use Perl regardless of whether that's where you have experience", then we still have a discussion worth having.

> 1. Community : there's no doubt Perl's community has taken a bit of a hit over the last n years population wise. In addition, the Perl community has, anecdotally, a reputation for being a bit terse [1]. Nothing cut and dry here, but again nothing that stands out IMHO.

Did you actually read that link, or just read a section title and assume it made your point? Because the author updated that section saying that he really can't talk much on that point, because he wasn't there, and the evidence shows it to have been fairly civil.

That said, Sebastian does have a bit of a reputation for being "terse". But that's one person. Since when does one person define a whole community?

> 2. Libraries : by…

I was a Perl lover once.

And now it seems I understand the haters.

Just don't use Perl.

The language seems fine, productive, even sublime at first but you will encounter some horrible design features.

Just read the following,

http://markmail.org/message/h2spyi5za4qheuft

-- Perl's data structure serialization is leaky. Thought you made an int ? Whoa ... serialized as a string.

http://blogs.perl.org/users/rurban/2013/02/no-indirect-considered-harmful.html#comment-370624

-- A language feature causing a burnout ? Well fuck me !

That's just a tip of the iceberg.

PHP, a fractal of bad design ?

Perl, a quantum bomb, waiting to tick off.

The Modern Perl movement is like saying "I'll close my eyes and crime ceases to exist."

No best practices will save you from broken language features.

The people who maintain Perl source code, are not a _fan_ of Modern Perl. They won't make "strict" the default or introduce signatures or better OOmodel.

The people who proclaim "Modern Perl" won't fork.

Even this release shows how clueless Perl maintainers are !

* They released a switch statement long long back

* And now they mark it even as "experimental" because of the leaky "my $_" scope.

Oh God ! I will never emotionally invest in another tool.

EDIT: Neutral language.

I don't think pure freedom. As in a fully funded party for life would be ever possible without secure routine monthly income, taking care of you while you do whatever you feel like.

Until then its just a trade off. A few days back I read a article: http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2013/07/perl-startups-lacuna-expanse.html

From the last paragraph: "Do not quit your day job. When you're starting your business, you need to make decisions from a position of strength. If you're making decisions because you're strapped for cash, you're almost certainly going to make the wrong decision. ..... if you haven't created new revenue streams by the time the previous ones dry up, you'll be right back at the problem of #1: making decisions based upon financial hardship rather than what's best for the business."

This thing explains the true deal about freedom in our lives. Once you have all the money in the world to take care of you, you will have the freedom to experiment and fail without dying along the way.

The key is financial freedom.

Over the past 10-12 years, Perl has been getting some significant speed boosts, on the order of 30% overall. It is of course still a very slow language when compared to compiled languages, but I'll take it.

https://blogs.perl.org/users/dimitrios_kechagias/2022/11/perl-performance-evolution-over-the-last-decade.html

I still code in Perl a fair bit for work. One great improvement I have taken advantage of is subroutine arguments, rather than unpacking @_ at the head of each subroutine. It is much easier to tell what the sub expects, and if the caller passes the wrong number of args it is a compile time error.

The main draw for me is that regex is built into the syntax of the language, and not a library. If the task requires a lot of pattern matching and string manipulation and speed isn't that critical, I reach for Perl.