Talk:Perl/Archive 6

mediation with a stick
This page has been protected. I'm starting another mediation page Talk:Perl/Mediation/GroundRules
 * Page protection has now been removed. Portions of the dispute have now gone before ArbCom (see WP:RFAR). I will continue to monitor this article. If I see signs of an edit war erupting again, I will take action to halt the war. --Durin 14:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

m// match operator
Does anyone here use  as a match operator over   (that's the match operator, not dor)? I've never really seen  used. If it isn't, shouldn't we remove the "m" from the Perl? Steve p 17:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I regularly use m. I've probably used m// on occasion. It's definitely part of the language, and I'd like to leave it in Perl, because I think it makes the exposition clearer. Swmcd 18:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I frequently write m{...} when the pattern will contain slashes. -- Dominus 20:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's the only time I really use it too. Steve p 20:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've personally standardised on using m{} (and s{} {}) for regular expressions many years ago because of the mess creating by escaping slashes. On a related note, for a long time I've also used q{} and qq{} instead of single and double quotes so that I can include quotes in my messages without escaping them.
 * Consistency helps with maintainability. Imroy 22:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Consistency helps with maintainability. Imroy 22:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I routinely use m//, figuring it will be easier for any Perl-naive maintainers who follow me to keep straight m//, s///, and tr/// if I spell them all out.


 * Atlant 23:10, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The Overview section
Perl is currently organized like


 * 1.1 Design
 * 1.2 Features
 * 1.3 Applications
 * 1.4 Implementation
 * 1.5 Availability

I'd like to change it to


 * 1.1 Features
 * 1.2 Applications
 * 1.3 Implementation
 * 1.4 Availability
 * 1.5 Design

It's true that Design logically comes before Features, but people reading an encyclopeida article aren't usually looking for a derivation from first principles. They want to know what this thing is and what is it good for. Leading with Features and Applications tells them that. In fact, I think there is even a case for moving Design down to the Origins section, like


 * 5.1 History
 * 5.2 Design
 * 5.3 Name
 * 5.4 The camel symbol
 * 5.5 Related links

Swmcd 18:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

TIOBE data and IRC chat
I believe these are not acceptable references to back up the inclusion of proposed material.

I am also not that interested in measures of Perl's popularity as criticisms; I am more interested in technical aspects. Ideogram 02:23, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

After reviewing Simetrical's comments on RfC/-Barry- I would agree that an External link to TIOBE could be included, with a disclaimer that their methodology is disputed. Ideogram 07:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a more fundamental problem with the TIOBE data is that it is raw data. Drawing conclusions from raw data is original research, and putting those conclusions in an article goes against WP:NOR. Swmcd 15:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The TIOBE data is not raw data, which is one of the problems. We can't verify it because we can never know if we get the same answer from the search engines. It's been cooked through their formula to end up with a percentage, thereby losing much of the original meaning. They can't publish the original data because it would show the popularity of most languages is continually increasing (since it is not a zero sum system). I don't think anyone, including Barry, was doing original research in Wikipedia. He merely reported the conclusions of TIOBE. Those conclusions, however, are not reliable or verifiable, and they do not come from a reputable source. Scarpia 11:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't favor putting anything from TIOBE in the article. Just a link in the External links section with a brief description and disclaimer. Ideogram 01:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I have no idea what point there would be to that. It is, literally, impossible for the TIOBE data to have anything meaningful to say about "popularity," for the reasons I've already enumerated in detail elsewhere.  It seems the only reason to include it is merely to appease a vocal editor, not because it is actually a reasonable link to include. Pudge 04:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions
Name "Perl" should be "Perl_programming_language" as stated in Naming Conventions, especially since a disambig page exists.

-- scott


 * Here's a page just on that.

Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language" in the case of natural languages or "programming language" in the case of programming languages. If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix.
 * That's a good guideline for deciding which subject to elongate for differentiation, but in this case, all the other Perl articles are titled something other than Perl, so we don't have that problem. I think the popularity of the Perl articles should also be considered. If one is far more popular, maybe it should get the un-suffixed name. -Barry- 16:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Let's ditch the Opinion section completely
I read a good deal of the Good Article Dispute regarding Intelligent_Design. Part of the debate revolved around the lack of a "Criticisms" or "Opinions" section. Another editor brought up several good points why this should be avoided. If criticism or opinion sections are "deprecated", we should consider sending the Opinion into the trash heap. Currently, the Pro section is just bad. Its death has been debated before, but avoided for far too long. Perl may be fun, but so are a lot of other things. The Con section is also rather tortured. Rather than being appropriately critical throughout the article, it contains a small collection of a few quotes that add little in terms of content. I think that casting a critical eye on certain places in the article, and getting rid of, as Jimbo Wales put it, a "troll magnet" will be helpful for improving this article. Steve p 01:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * One person I respect has opined that languages should not have "Pros" and "Cons" or "Criticisms" or "Opinions" since they are only tools. You don't have any of the above things for hammers, for instance.  Ideogram 06:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Right, a criticism section on hammers would lead to complaints that hammers don't work well fastening screws or cleaning windows. Steve p 13:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This may or may not be in the process of being arbitrated . If not, it may be mediated further. I already commented on this in the failed mediation here. I think we should decide on what content is appropriate for the article. Then do what you want with the categorization because I doubt I'd want to get involved in style issues here any more. I think it's a bad idea to make changes to something when it's in arbitration.


 * Jimmy Wales wrote "In many cases [criticism sections] are necessary, and in many cases they are not necessary."


 * When there's a major problem about opposing views, being accurate, etc., let's not add to it by trying to reorganize things and then figuring out how to "fold debates into the narrative." I'm not promoting "random criticisms" by trolls. I'm promoting good content. Hopefully, ArbCom will decide whether it belongs in the article. If they decide in favor of it, let's try to word it well and put it in the Opinion section before trying to do more than that. -Barry- 07:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * No, hopefully ArbCom will not decide. ArbCom are involved with assessing Pudge's actions, not the contents of Perl, despite your attempts to make it appear as if they are. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   10:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hex here. Ideogram 17:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * My first sentence was "This may or may not be in the process of being arbitrated." That's not an attempt to make it appear that ArbCom is deciding on the contents of Perl. If they're not, then it could be made a separate case because it's been through mediation. It's very bad form to be changing the article during this, but it won't hurt my case any, so do what you want. I might ask for the article to be locked though. -Barry- 17:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The implication that this article may be being arbitrated is simply untrue. And considering that there is no active mediation process for this article either, then editing it is fine. Asking for the article to be locked, presumably because you can't get your way, is blatant bullying. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   18:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't ask for the article to be locked. Ideogram 18:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Mediation was closed with no findings, in other words, as if no mediation took place.


 * It seems that, other than Barry, we have some agreement that Opinions should go. Anyone else feel anything either way?  Steve p 18:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Flush it. -- Dominus 18:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   23:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree too. Just got back from vacation, seems arbitration has died. Just putting in my 2c in case somebody complains later there wasn't enough consensus. -- RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib Reverts 21:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Me too. Itub 20:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

If you are part of this consensus, please sign. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   07:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The Perl Wiki in Wikia
Hello Perl Wikipedians,

I'm a Systems_Engineer and Perl advocate (advocacy) from Pennsylvania, USA.

There has been some discussion in the perl.advocacy usenet, started by Shlomi Fish, about centralizing all of the Perl wikis and creating The Central Wiki for Perl, or The Perl Wiki.

Angela_Beesley from Wikia, handed The Perl Wiki and the Perl-l@wikia.com mailing list to me following some discussion that I had with The_Wikimedia_Foundation on the foundation-l@wikimedia.org mailing list.

I would very much like to talk with everyone here about Perl on Wikipedia and The Perl Wiki now on Wikia. You've had some discussion here about removing the Opinion section from the Perl topic in Wikipedia. The Perl Opinion section can be moved over to Wikia where Perl biased opinions and discussions are very much allowed by Wikia.

I really need all of your excellent Wiki expertise to help me get things started in The Perl Wiki on Wikia. I'm not a Wiki expert, I'm simply a Systems Engineer and Perl advocate, and I would like your help to get me up to speed more quickly.

Thanks,

--Ermeyers 15:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What you're trying to do is certainly commendable, but Wikipedia is not the place to advertise such a site. Perhaps when your Wiki has some actual pages, and is an actual resource worthy of mentioning in an encyclopedia, then you or someone else can add the link in. But not when it's empty. You are free however to mention it here on the talk page, and on your user page. Imroy 22:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * For reference, the opinion section being discussed can be found in the archives at  --Pjf 01:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

You've immediately deleted the links that I added in the appropriate locations, and I'll simply ask you to put them back in there with me, eventually. I've gotten your message Imroy, and I didn't come here to solicit and advertise, as much as I came here to announce a new major resource that is being built for the Perl community, and I came here to ask for help from the very people that I expect to get help from and I expect to help in return. There are some other people working on this project elsewhere, and Angela Beesley is one of the people who knows exactly what we're trying to do. I know that you don't know me, but I also don't know you, so I'll see what I can find out about you. You know everything that you need to know about me. Thanks for the reference Pjf. --Ermeyers 04:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As a matter of course, we assume good faith, so defensive behavior is unneeded. Let's just wait to see what transpires. --Ancheta Wis 07:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * If/when the Perl Wiki is a useful resource then I'll be happy to add it back into the article, or let someone do so. At the moment it is empty and does not represent a resource we should link to. The Perl article should contain information about Perl, and links to find more information. When someone is using Wikipedia to learn about Perl (e.g a highschool student or future Perl programmer), what are they supposed to do with an external link to an empty Wiki?
 * Ermeyers, would you mind clarifying the statement "I'll see what I can find out about you"? It sounds like you might be about to launch some sort of personal attack. I hope that's not the case and it was simply a bad choice of words. --Imroy 08:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

No problem, so all can calm down. Was I real happy to see the links deleted? Honestly, I wasn't, but I'm not mad at you, because I know where you're coming from, because I actually did read everything that you wrote to me. Please just read what I wrote above, not what you first read into it. I simply stated everything that I saw you do, acknowledged that I understood what you had said to me, and I always like to find out exactly who I'm talking to, because it helps me to understand the context of your discussion better. I simply went over to see what I could find out about you at User:Imroy, and then I used your nice page as a template to create my own, since I'm a new login here. I've been using Wikipedia for quite a while, but I've only just recently found the need to login to become a Wikipedian. We should get along fine, and like I said, eventually we can put those links back up there together, you, I and hopefully a few others working together. It's just a matter of us taking the time to communicate fully. I recently filled in User:Ermeyers. --Ermeyers 10:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see what is currently happening at The Perl Wiki, and please read for yourself what it says in How to start a Wiki – "Publicize your wiki," and please tell me how, in any way, I deviated from the good suggestions and "ideas" that were presented regarding Wikipedia, specifically. I will not allow this much needed Perl Community discussion to end here, so is anyone else interested in helping me out, rather than simply defeating a very honest global Perl Community effort immediately? Obviously, we have a "Which came first, the Perl Wiki chicken or the Perl Wiki egg?" problem going on here, and I brought my little Perl Wiki egg over to the very right Perl Wikipedian place to nuture it and develop it, and I sincerely asked for some expert Perl Wikipedian help from the Perl Wikipedians to help me develop the new Perl Wiki egg into a fully viable Perl Wiki chicken, and the little Perl Wiki egg was immediately aborted for being too underdeveloped for someone's good tastes. I honestly admitted that I'm not a wiki expert, and this thing just sort of fell into my lap following a discussion with The Wikimedia Foundation. Could I have done anything differently than what I did? Can someone please help me out here, and talk to me somewhat positively. Thanks.:) --Ermeyers 00:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Step 1 is to advertise. Well, as said above, WP is not the place to advertise. WP is NOT a collection of links to things that have the potential to be useful. In fact, WP is not a lot of things. Please read that. &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib Reverts 13:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm responding to you here, so please don't flare up and accuse me of being a crank or a troll. I went perfectly by the book, and I did exactly what the book said to do.  The Wikimedia experts that I communicated with at The Wikimedia Foundation suggested that I read that Wikibook to get things started, so maybe I'm actually right, and you fellows criticizing the publishing of a new wiki are wrong. This is the last thing that I'm going to say about this disputed topic.  --Ermeyers 14:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Who was working on the Perl Opinion section? Someone was nice enough to transfer all of the Perl Opinion archive over into The Perl Wiki, the new home of Perl opinions and open discussions, so I need anyone who was interested in that area to come over to the Wikia site to help me clean things up correctly. Like I said, I'm not a wiki expert, so I need some good help, from like minded Perl people. My username is Ermeyers, both here and there. Thanks. --Ermeyers 14:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't consider having the Opinion section restored a good thing. Steve p 15:43, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The Opinion section is not being restored in Wikipedia; instead, it is now hosted at a more appropriate free and open location. I believe that this is one of the major reasons why Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley started Wikia. --Ermeyers 16:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Please read a discussion with an Anonymous helper at Talk:Main_page – "Anonymous helpers" --Ermeyers 16:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Ermeyers, I'm sorry, but you were mislead. The article that you read suggested that you should add your link to Wikipedia in order to advertise your Web site. This is actually in contradiction to Wikipedia policy (see WP:NOT). I've left a note over at Wikibooks, suggesting that the text needs to be changed. In the meanwhile, please do come back to Wikipedia and re-add your link after your site is a more comprehensive reference. We would be happy to review it then and see how it works out. -Harmil 15:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The article in question states: Link to your wiki on a relevant page in the Wikipedia namespace. This is not in violation of WP:NOT policy, as relevant links are allowed even from people who are involved with the site. HighInBC 16:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * This is not the Wikipedia namespace. Articles live in the 'Main' namespace, while the Wikipedia namespace is for administration pages, like the aforementioned WP:NOT page. I'm not sure what page would be relevant though. --Imroy 21:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok folks, it is important to remember that simply being involved in a site does not make the posting of it advertising. Even if is site benifits from being on WP, it is okay if it improves the article. Settle down and assume good faith, it is essential to the proccess. Please make comments and actions based on the the relevency and the value of the link, not the person who posted it. Read WP:NOT, it explicitly says the involvment in a site does not disqualify you from posting it. Is it relevent? Is it biased? Does it violate any rules of WP? Does it improve the article? These are valid questions. HighInBC 16:00, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * My justification for removing the link was that it did not improve the article, since it was (at the time) a completely empty Wiki. As I noted above, how is that supposed to help someone trying to learn about Perl? It doesn't. However, mentioning it here on the talk page would have sufficed, since Ermeyers is looking for editors for the new wiki and this is a good place to find such people. And as has been said numerous times already, the link to the Perl Wiki will be fine once it's a useful resource. --Imroy 21:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Now. Ok Perl Wikimedian community, it's important for you to realize that I'm the type of person, read Eric R. Meyers, who is actually crazy enough to be willing to risk making an absolute fool of himself in public for a very good public thing. I love Perl, and I love what you Perl Wikipedian people have been doing. I'm very much a part of the Perl community, and I'm a complete Perl advocate, and a Wikimedia Foundation advocate as well. My name happens to be the current owner of The Perl Wiki, because Angela Beesley did that to me on her own, without my asking her to do that to me. Thanks Angela! :) I see a very good thing handed to me, and I commit myself to it's development, and I run the race with it, and I go looking for the very best people that I can possibly find to help me with it.  That's you people here.  I go through The Lion's Den for the things that I believe in, and I always come out of it completely unscathed, like Daniel did a very long time ago, because I always tell the truth, and I always keep the faith.  Let's make this good thing happen together.  Put my links back in, and commit yourselves to developing a good thing, please.  Thanks. --Ermeyers 18:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Ermeyers, I have nothing against you or your Perl Wiki. In fact, I wish you well in making it a resource for the Perl community. I might even contribute to it myself some day. But until it is a useful resource, its link does not belong on the Wikipedia Perl article. That's all that matters. --Imroy
 * Okay.:) --Ermeyers 23:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Comparative Performance
Upon reading the part of the article on the speed of Perl, I believe it can give the wrong impression. For example on a Perl web site I am familiar with, the pages load quite quickly (in 1-2 seconds), whereas a corresponding client-server implementation using a commercial  language  responds in half-minutes (30 seconds). I have seen this type of response for two or three non-perl sites. Somebody is not telling all the story. Customers are actually putting up with this. Developers who do not know Perl better are actually startled at the speed of the Perl site. But if this point belongs on the Wikia site or elsewhere, then please tell me so. --Ancheta Wis 10:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Without a verifiable source, we cannot simply change this. On top of this, most sources on performance have some sort of bias.  I think what we have is fine. Steve p 12:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I got some numbers right here
Since Yahoo runs Perl, we can see that even though Perl is interpreted, the site runs faster than MSN or Microsoft. And since Perl is interpreted, Perl runs slower than Google's site. From Alexa: --Ancheta Wis 00:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Google is faster than 82% of the rest of the Net, avg load times 0.9sec
 * 2) Yahoo is slower than 53% of the rest of the Net, avg load times 2.2sec
 * 3) MSN is slower than 72% of the rest of the Net, avg load times 3.4 sec
 * 4) Microsoft is slower than 82% of the rest of the Net, avg load times 4.3 sec


 * Unfortunately, this information would violate WP:NOR. There are many, many more problems with those results fail to take into account including, but not limited to: not showing bytes/second, hardware and network performance differences, lack of verifiable results, and even the speed of light.  Like HighInBC said, "There are simply too many variables."  Steve p 03:21, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

From the article:
 * "Their Perl implementations typically took up more memory than implementations in other languages, and had varied speed results."
 * A previous section of the article mentioned that smaller Perl program development time trumps larger Perl program execution time. Thus this reference benchmark ignores a principal advantage of the language. In the industry, when a successful program runs slowly, a business will simply buy more powerful hardware, which is a scalable solution, rather than invest in more software developers using another language, with an uncertain time of deployment (with that set of programmers). A going business will find uncertainty to be unacceptable; risk trumps cash, and a successful business has cash at its disposal. The same cannot be said of unproven software solutions which are better at some benchmark than a known-working program.
 * "Nothing beats a working program." --Herbert Simon
 * Ancheta Wis 16:13, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

It is very hard to compare the speed of 2 languages. You cannot tell simply by seeing how fast a webpage loads. There are simply too many variables. Even in benchmark tests it can be hard to compare due to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the langauges. HighInBC 16:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

# This is a comment
I was reading this and it does not seem to mention that text following the # sign will be ignored as a comment. I added this line to text to the section about the shebang:

Because the shebang starts with the # sign, the line is treated as a comment and ignored by the perl interpreter.

However I think a line somewhere noting this would be helpful as comments are being used in bare bones examples. Not sure where it should go though... thoughts, suggestions? HighInBC 20:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I added a section on comments at the beggining. It may need to be reworded, perhaps the information does not need it's own section but can be incoorperated into the hello world section. This is such a nice article I feel that I have sort of slapped a cheap patch on it. HighInBC 20:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * How's this:

Example Program
In Perl, the canonical "Hello world" program is:

print "Hello, world!\n";   # '\n' is a 'newline'
 * 1) !/usr/bin/perl

The first line is the shebang, which tells the operating system where to find the Perl interpreter. The second line prints the string Hello, world! and a newline. A comment  '\n' is a 'newline'  follows.

# sign is Comment symbol
The # sign on the second line is a 'comment symbol', which allows the perl interpreter to ignore everything after the # sign, up to the end of the line of code.

--Ancheta Wis 03:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you mean comment indicator rather than "comment symbol". &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   09:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Done; linked to token (parser). --Ancheta Wis 10:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The Perl Wiki in Wikia, plea 2
Hello User:Imroy and other Perl Wikipedians,

I'm working as fast as I can, so could you please take another honest look at what I'm trying to do for the global Perl community in Perl, and suggest to me what I need to do to get you folks more fully involved in this mutual effort. I was really counting on you to step in, and I honestly can't implement this good thing without your great expertise and full participation. Thanks. --Ermeyers 01:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

A GPL Perl application
Talk:wikiCalc points to some Perl code by Dan Bricklin, the visionary behind Visicalc, which just happens to have kicked off a few multi-billion-dollar industries. Some people including Bricklin have considered a new kind of application using wikis and spreadsheets. They envision wikis to play a role in the development of this Perl program, of which the Beta version is GPL.

At the very least, this code could be discussed, in wiki-style, on a suitable site; one side-effect might be that another generation of programmers could be inspired to pick up the Perl language. --Ancheta Wis 16:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello User:Ancheta Wis, As you can probably tell from what I've already written in here about The Perl Wiki in Wikia, I'm a Perl advocate who is also extremely interested in finding new ways to bring new people into the global Perl Wiki community. The Perl site is a new, free and open Perl home, not a Wikimedia limited-content location, so I'd like to suggest to you and all of the other Perl Wikipedians here that you folks help me do exactly what you're talking about here, by bringing these types of things over to Perl to discuss them, express your opinions and experiment with these interesting new ideas. The Perl site will be an excellent staging ground for the Perl Wiki experts to try new things, discuss things and prepare articles fully before neutralizing the content for the Wikimedia namespaces, such as Wikipedia.  Wikis cannot develop correctly without the right people being involved.  Don't you agree?  I'd love to discuss this with you and others more completely, and I'd love to have you and others participate in Perl.  I'm a Systems Engineer not a Wiki expert, so I need some good Perl Wiki people like you.  Welcome Home to Perl, to you, your personal opinions and your interesting new ideas. --Wikia:Perl:User:Ermeyers Ermeyers 21:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Critique

 * "Optimizing Perl can require intimate knowledge of its workings rather than skill with the language and its syntax, meaning that the problem is with the implementation of Perl rather than the language itself. Perl 6, the next major version, will address some of these lessons that other languages have already learned."
 * Since Perl 5 is a successful language already, and since Perl 6 is being bootstrapped, the critique is a future rather than an actual. What about giving some concrete examples or references to items which can be noted. For example, The Pragmatic Programmer lists Perl 5 as an actual language for instrumenting a developer's environment; that is, Perl 5 is part of the solution. This appears to contradict or perhaps weaken the quote above.
 * Dynamic typing is one reason that Perl works so well, for example.
 * A 'glue language orientation' is another reason that Perl works so well; there are specialized languages which solve a niche problem which a Perl program can simply slurp in, and glue together to solve a problem. Thus Dan Bricklin can simply write JavaScript in his Perl wikiCalc, to solve a Web problem while retaining the Perl orientation. In other words, Perl allows multi-language solutions in the same code-set. This is not so easy to get away with in a static language. --Ancheta Wis 02:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are a lot of people that use and recommend Perl, but what does that have to do with the ability to speed up a Perl program? Complete optimization of a Perl program does require a good deal of knowledge of Perl internals.  That's why some of the more popular talks on Perl optimization has been given several times by the current Perl 5.8 Pumpking.  Steve p 13:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What about the Computer Language Shootout at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org?
 * For example, testing Perl against the more "readable" Python, it shows no advantage for Perl.
 * Though, Perl is clearly faster than PHP, according to their tests.

I'd like to respectfully dispute Ancheta Wis's revert of my edit to the Applications section of Perl. My edit removes a single sentence that does not refer to Perl applications. The reason given was "These are historical examples of Perl applications" but I do not see that information in this sentence. Do you? Here is the sentence:

It's known as one of "the three Ps" (Perl, Python and PHP, plus Ruby as an honorary member), which are the most popular open source scripting languages for the Web, though open source Java and C# implementations have grown popular in recent years.

Thank you for your consideration.
 * Dear anon, I am working on another article completely. It helps when we add our comments to the bottom of the page, which I am now doing. Actually I agree that C# is not a scripting language. --Ancheta Wis 12:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC) (or Java) --12:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * C# can be a scripting language in ASP.NET...just like Java in JSP. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.3.174.179 (talk • contribs).