Looking at the first 10, none of them are asking for Perl specifically, they're generic job listings with a point "N years of experience in Bash, Perl, Python, Java..."
EDIT: since it was silently changed: This was originally titled and submitted as "Are banks still using Perl in 2020? The answer is no." (still visible in the URL slug)
This is hardly a surprise. No matter if you like a language or not, you have to acknowledge that we don't develop software in a vacuum and we cannot ignore market trends. Don't fall in love with your technology [0].
(I won't comment on the Python 2 rewrite though)
I like Perl a lot. Out of the usual, interpreted dynamic languages, it is still my favourite. It's fun, incredibly expressive, got some things right early on (CPAN) and the community is probably the most entertaining out there.
It also caters to a kind of developer that no longer exists, or at least is in the minority now.
I will keep it as a sort of dirty pleasure for myself. Among the likes of Forth and Lisp.
> It also caters to a kind of developer that no longer exists, or at least is in the minority now.
The one developer I met who liked Perl was quite the character. He thought in a certain way I envied. Once he rewrote a bash script into Perl just for fun (and to confuse the rest of us). As a gratuitous side effect, the Perl script cut execution of the same task from over 1m in Bash to a matter of seconds.
I've resolved to learn it myself now, even if it nudges me more towards a mode of thinking. There's still plenty it can do.
RHEL's distribution of Python 2.6 is still supported as part of the OS. As the author noted, the scripts were written to be forwards compatible with Python 3 for when the bank upgrades to a newer version of RHEL.
Seems to be common amongst pythonistas. I've run into their tired bashing of perl for 20+ years.
I use perl daily. And Julia. And C. Python more like weekly.
Always select the right tool for the job. Changing code that works, and is critical should not be undertaken lightly. Most especially not of irrational dislike of the current implementation language.
Not at all. I rather wrote this to illustrate how critical legacy software is created, operated and evolved over time, but it seems that readers can't get past immediately defending/bashing Perl.
Yeah, I'm not convinced. Not in the slightest. JPMorgan has something like 250,000 employees. Just think of how many divisions and departments there are. It might be that someone ran a report at a high level over some major projects and said, "We're not using it." I guarantee it's still there in pockets still being used and still being maintained.
I think you’ll need something more than a feeling, to disagree with the person tasked with finding uses of Perl at JP Morgan on how much Perl is used at JP Morgan
Also it sounds like you didn’t read the piece as this comes right at the start:
> search covering repositories with 50M lines of code and thousands of servers
I concur. I'd have to reach out to my former colleagues but it seems possible that someone rooted out Perl in one or more departments or even a division but not for the entirety of JPMC. Ten years ago the word I heard was Python and people had shifted from Perl for new things.
This guy may have gotten Perl out of his part of the JP Morgan world, but JP Morgan still actively uses Perl. It’s not as big as it once was, but there are teams still developing and deploying Perl.
This is what I figured. My experience of SW development at a merchant bank is siloed teams using their own development tools to support their banking operations. There was never a company wide mandate on using/not using some technology.
Reminds me of a quote from the Learning Perl book:
"There's a joke among Perl developers that the next economic crash will be caused by a bug in someone's Perl script. Even then, all those redundant economists will have at least one employable skill."
JPMorgan is only one bank; it's still used in plenty of banks. What is the point of this article anyway? Proving 'perl is dead' as it says in the epilogue?
Im a Junior dev and I actually have been learning basic Perl over the last year. I think Perl is still useful in shell scripts and most of the time its faster than awk and sed. But I cant justify using it instead of Python for scripts or applications. I cant think of any advantage to using perl instead of python in 2020. Even if there is an advantage, any coder can read and write python without learning python whereas Perl scripts are a liability, few can maintain them. I would love to use Perl I think its powerful and especially I see use cases for it in data munging. But at the current moment it needs a killer app that can offer some clear justification over python.
Because the servers ran on RHEL 6, so the application had to run on python 2.6.
Servers will be upgraded to RHEL 7, so the application had to run on python 2.7 too in prevision of the upgrade very soon.
Then servers will be upgraded to RHEL 8 maybe 5-10 years later, so the application better work on python 3 too.
It is not glamorous but it's the practical way to make critical software work and continue working for some period of time. I think we can all agree that we don't want our banks to break every 3 months accidentally due to the newer release of whatever.
Not in JP Morgan, apparently. As mentioned in the post, the code was barely touched since 2006. The rewrite was needed presumably so that the code could be better maintained (or hot patched, if the emergency arrived). And there was, presumably, more Python devs at the firm than Perl devs.
I call bullshit. Every macbook on this bank (and elsewhere) has several perl programs running daily and supporting the jobs of the people who own them.
JP Morgan doesn't support macbook. I've only ever seen one employee in my time there with a macbook, who's had to go out of his way to procure it and he had regular issues because it was unsupported, issues like DNS not working.
I'm not surprised that Perl is being phased out, but was JPMC really that big on Perl? IIRC, I worked at JPMC in NYC over 10 years ago and IIRC they never had the kind of centralized Perl infrastructure like Morgan Stanley did -- though after the BankOne acquisition, things started getting streamlined a bit.
Nothing against Python, but I'd have expected the choice of a little more (statically) typed language for such a critical application (also considering future maintenance). Any reasoning behind why?
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
Including many that seem pretty clear Perl is involved in a substantial way: https://jpmc.fa.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en...
[+] [-] user5994461|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] detaro|5 years ago|reply
https://db.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/DBWebsite/job/New-Yor...
EDIT: since it was silently changed: This was originally titled and submitted as "Are banks still using Perl in 2020? The answer is no." (still visible in the URL slug)
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TurboHaskal|5 years ago|reply
(I won't comment on the Python 2 rewrite though)
I like Perl a lot. Out of the usual, interpreted dynamic languages, it is still my favourite. It's fun, incredibly expressive, got some things right early on (CPAN) and the community is probably the most entertaining out there.
It also caters to a kind of developer that no longer exists, or at least is in the minority now.
I will keep it as a sort of dirty pleasure for myself. Among the likes of Forth and Lisp.
[0] https://prog21.dadgum.com/128.html
[+] [-] HeckFeck|5 years ago|reply
The one developer I met who liked Perl was quite the character. He thought in a certain way I envied. Once he rewrote a bash script into Perl just for fun (and to confuse the rest of us). As a gratuitous side effect, the Perl script cut execution of the same task from over 1m in Bash to a matter of seconds.
I've resolved to learn it myself now, even if it nudges me more towards a mode of thinking. There's still plenty it can do.
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|5 years ago|reply
I don't know whether any of them use Perl. I can tell you that if they use Perl, it has never caused a problem.
We use a fair amount of Perl, and it's a good tool.
[+] [-] arianvanp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharmab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daneel_w|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hpcjoe|5 years ago|reply
I use perl daily. And Julia. And C. Python more like weekly.
Always select the right tool for the job. Changing code that works, and is critical should not be undertaken lightly. Most especially not of irrational dislike of the current implementation language.
[+] [-] user5994461|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemiller2002|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiofih|5 years ago|reply
Also it sounds like you didn’t read the piece as this comes right at the start:
> search covering repositories with 50M lines of code and thousands of servers
[+] [-] AThrowAway2718|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjs33|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sys_64738|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HeckFeck|5 years ago|reply
"There's a joke among Perl developers that the next economic crash will be caused by a bug in someone's Perl script. Even then, all those redundant economists will have at least one employable skill."
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tluyben2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hpcjoe|5 years ago|reply
And ... did they actually, really do that, for a critical piece of infrastructure, because someone dislikes perl?
That should worry bank customers, shareholders, etc.
Business and tooling decisions should be rational, and risk reducing. I don't see that this change met either of these criteria.
[+] [-] faizshah|5 years ago|reply
I do think Serverless Perl could be a good idea though: https://metacpan.org/pod/AWS::Lambda
[+] [-] Jonnax|5 years ago|reply
Why?
Also this is some weird post, is this blogger famous? Because it's not of much substance.
[+] [-] user5994461|5 years ago|reply
Servers will be upgraded to RHEL 7, so the application had to run on python 2.7 too in prevision of the upgrade very soon.
Then servers will be upgraded to RHEL 8 maybe 5-10 years later, so the application better work on python 3 too.
It is not glamorous but it's the practical way to make critical software work and continue working for some period of time. I think we can all agree that we don't want our banks to break every 3 months accidentally due to the newer release of whatever.
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blondin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clscott|5 years ago|reply
https://metacpan.org/pod/release/XSAWYERX/perl-5.32.0/pod/pe...
[+] [-] snicker7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enriquto|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user5994461|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tooltalk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WinstonSmith84|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sys_64738|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] antidaily|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerr|5 years ago|reply