On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 05:16:04AM -0700, Linda W wrote:
> Alexander Shukaev wrote:
> >Dear Linda,
> >
> >It feels like Perl is not very trendy these days.
> Trendy? How _trendy_ is international support? International and perl
> support were the first things to be provided as optional modules not because
> they were trendy, but considered essential. Perl is usually used for
> 'plumbing' type tasks. It hooks things together and can transform
> them. However, it's hard to consider 'plumbing' trendy -- but one
> wouldn't build
> a house w/o plumbing because it isn't 'trend'.
> But you say you haven't seen much in perl+vim -- how have you looked?
> I tried searching for vim plugins and scripts and adjuncts on
> "search.cpan.org". I came up with about 270 hits. Among those are
> things that provide vim functionality to create IDE's debuggers,
> packages, use for wiki creation to do LaTex typesetting from vim, website
> creation addons, and tons of system administration scripts. Computer
> system administration isn't very trendy -- but without it, you'd have
> nothing you are using today. No internet, no world connections, no
> trends except what are set by the large corporations...
> Maybe "utility" or "usefulness" should be considered before trendy (or
> at least, as well)? How many filters can you write in python, without
> using a separate file? Or -- more precisely, how many python 1-liners
> can people easily write and use? Does python even have an option
> to execute a line of code from the command line or use it as a
> filter?
> What is the option in python to write and execute a line of code?
> Can you write a 1 line python filter capitalizes all occurrences of
> your name and replace all occurances of :-) with their unicode
> equivalent, of a white smiling face (☺) using it's name "white
> smiling face" .. could you do it in any of the languages you mention?
> You can in perl. It's the only language that has full unicode support.
> Isn't multicore/multithreaded, 'Trendy'?
> Recently someone did a program to test timekeeping in python. It used
> 9 threads. I completed in 67.35 seconds using 181.94% cpu (100%=1 core,
> so 1.82 cores on a 12 core machine.
> As a curiosity I wrote the exact same program in perl to see how it would
> perform (cuz I thought the MD5sum was slow)... I was turned on my head.
> Same** program in perl took 3.36 seconds using 870% cpu.
> **-I didn't use any perl tricks -- I tried to follow the python
> example as closely as possible (to see code for each, and
> compare, see http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1076596).
> So for the 9 threads:
> lang #thrds #cores_used %efficency clocktime cputime(Usr+Sys)
> python 9 1.82 20.2% 67.35s 122.53s
> perl 9 8.70 96.7% 3.36s 29.23
> From the above, stated as percentages or multipliers,
> perl is 478% more efficient in making use of multicore resources.
> In real time, python takes 64 seconds longer over the base time
> that was needed, of 3.36s. Python is 1900% SLOWER.
> Someone mentioned python might not be optimal in parallelism due to
> threading problems.
> So look at the actual amount of CPUtime used for each to do the work.
> 122.53/29.23. For heavy number crunching, perl (with max precision
> possible in x86-64 HW, takes less than 1/4th the time, i.e. perl
> is 4.2x the speed of python.
> Python may be trendy, but for getting actual work done, perl is not
> only considerably faster, but has most all the libraries needed to do
> it's work *built-in*. -- know wondering about what to 'import'.
> I could go on for WAY too long, on this, but lets look at who *sets*
> the trends...
> The most complicated and central function in text processing -- the
> regular expression.
> Did python choose posix RE or extended RE syntax? Nope.
> javascript and python and most modern languages have copied the
> perl's regex syntax and features -- and note-- perl has no problem
> trying to make things *easier* for python developers. When
> perl implemented named subexpressions or captures in Regex's, in
> addition to the perl syntax, the Python syntax as added as well
> to make things easier for those familiar with that syntax.
> Perl's Regex engine has been described as the 'best of breed' --
> with java, javascript, ruby, python et al, all adopting the
> Regex syntax developed in Perl.
> If it wasn't for the groundwork laid by perl, you wouldn't be
> doing scripting in the other languages you are today -- as
> they would have had to develop, "at least_, their own regex engine.
> So ok, the other languages are more trendy -- but many are where
> they are at today because of groundwork laid by perl.
> Aside from that, you are not really including the languages (are you?)
> Aren't they DLL's that are loaded if present and not loaded if not
> used? Are you providing the DLL's for each language? Usually, what
> is added is the ability to load the DLL if it is present. So really,
> you don't need to include perl -- just the ability to make use of it
> at run time if it is present, right? Or did you really link all of
> those languages in with your vim binary? If that's the case...
> then that's a bigger problem.
> For most (all -- not sure about LUA) of those languages, the actual
> support for them is in an external library -- so
> the users don't actually 'pay' for the languages they don't use as they
> are not loaded and -- if they don't use them -- they don't even need to be
> on their machine.
> >Support for that many languages was added because certain popular
> >plugins are written partly (or fully) in these languages rather
> >than Vim Script. Python is probably the most popular language for
> >extending Vim right now, perhaps after Vim Script. Ruby goes next,
> >then Lua. But I've never came across a single plugin which would
> >rely on Perl to be honest. May I ask why you think that Perl is so
> >important for that Vim distribution?
> #2 on the list for http://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php.
> was an IDE. You should check out:. https://metacpan.org/release/Vim-Debug.
> It's already been done for perl and from the documentation it should
> be extensible to other languages.. But it IS written in perl...
> So you honestly didn't come across a single plugin that would rely on perl?
> Where did you look?
nice rant, Linda, bravo!
but all this and no mention of CPAN, while we vim children squabble
over the best plugin manager
I think python gets picked over perl because of all the bad and
obfuscated perl code that's been written over the years and it just
scares people
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