> I also think the lack of static types makes writing complex systems massively harder, but that's not a criticism of Perl in particular.
I get what you're saying, but also that's kind of BS at the same time. If you're thinking Python type annotations are a great feature, then you're entitled to your opinion. Others might say static typing of a dynamic language is pointless, and yet type analysis does help find bugs in code... to which I would agree. And yet the cost of adding static type annotations, which are not very static, causes the cognitive load to increase, and increases line-noise in a very ironic way given how Python was originally parroted as a less obscure script.
To that last point, let's not forget about sigils in Perl, and how they sorta are a form of type indicator. There is not much ambiguity when the script uses a symbol out in front of any given type of variable ref. The topic of tokenizing variables/ constants, lists, arrays, hashes, or whatever... entities in a script is an academic topic, but it's not! Just look at GOlang for example, they made a huge mistake by exporting variables and things by using the First character of the object, upper or lowercase determines if that thing is exported. One does not need to go find the declaration of the object to see if there was an "Exported" key word annotated at the definition, as is the custom in Python. But the problem is now the language relies on latin language concepts of upper/lower case characters... which excludes many large spoken & written languages used around the world. Thing any Asian, or middle eastern typeset. Anyhoo, Python got that right... one could in theory write python in one's own native spoken language, and Perl can be written in Klingon if you want... any arbitrary spoken language. One of the reasons is because the sigil's are separate from the typeset, and can be changed. In this way, and many other ways, the pathological pragmatism of Perl is outstanding, and the lack of weird opinions is both a strength and weakness. One last bit about typing, performance, and correctness.... Perl is very fast. I'm always reading how in Python the `for` loop is preferable to the `while` loop because one is implemented in python itself, and the other is a very optimal C code implementation. Perl is optimised at every corner of the language, except modules, but also modules who choose... Python does that too for modules, like any math or data-science stuff.
On that last point, I want to throw a bone, and 100% agree most of the Perl libraries for modern practices are out dated, or non-existent, or security problems. A programming language is only as useful as it could be for any given college student to use for a 1st-year software-engineering program. So if the ecosystem is dead, the language is pretty much dead. That said, I know plenty of neck beards who still use IRC, and bang out Perl for quick prototyping... before moving to GO, C, or whatever...
I get what you're saying, but also that's kind of BS at the same time. If you're thinking Python type annotations are a great feature, then you're entitled to your opinion. Others might say static typing of a dynamic language is pointless, and yet type analysis does help find bugs in code... to which I would agree. And yet the cost of adding static type annotations, which are not very static, causes the cognitive load to increase, and increases line-noise in a very ironic way given how Python was originally parroted as a less obscure script.
To that last point, let's not forget about sigils in Perl, and how they sorta are a form of type indicator. There is not much ambiguity when the script uses a symbol out in front of any given type of variable ref. The topic of tokenizing variables/ constants, lists, arrays, hashes, or whatever... entities in a script is an academic topic, but it's not! Just look at GOlang for example, they made a huge mistake by exporting variables and things by using the First character of the object, upper or lowercase determines if that thing is exported. One does not need to go find the declaration of the object to see if there was an "Exported" key word annotated at the definition, as is the custom in Python. But the problem is now the language relies on latin language concepts of upper/lower case characters... which excludes many large spoken & written languages used around the world. Thing any Asian, or middle eastern typeset. Anyhoo, Python got that right... one could in theory write python in one's own native spoken language, and Perl can be written in Klingon if you want... any arbitrary spoken language. One of the reasons is because the sigil's are separate from the typeset, and can be changed. In this way, and many other ways, the pathological pragmatism of Perl is outstanding, and the lack of weird opinions is both a strength and weakness. One last bit about typing, performance, and correctness.... Perl is very fast. I'm always reading how in Python the `for` loop is preferable to the `while` loop because one is implemented in python itself, and the other is a very optimal C code implementation. Perl is optimised at every corner of the language, except modules, but also modules who choose... Python does that too for modules, like any math or data-science stuff.
On that last point, I want to throw a bone, and 100% agree most of the Perl libraries for modern practices are out dated, or non-existent, or security problems. A programming language is only as useful as it could be for any given college student to use for a 1st-year software-engineering program. So if the ecosystem is dead, the language is pretty much dead. That said, I know plenty of neck beards who still use IRC, and bang out Perl for quick prototyping... before moving to GO, C, or whatever...