robertlemmen's comments

robertlemmen | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is Perl 5 or Perl 6 still worth learning in 2019?

IMHO there are two different things at work here: one is the tool or language that you are using for your job. This is highly specific, and most people will not be working with Perl 5 or 6 in their day job.

However, we all need to learn general software engineering much more as well, and that is a very different piece of problem: here the tools are not specific, you can do that in any language.

More importantly, no single language will allow you to truly understand software engineering, you must look at it from different vantage points, i.e. very different languages and development philosophies. In this area Perl, especially 6, is super interesting because it allows you to study a variety of interesting concepts while still being modern and accessible (compared to the alternatives of learning LISP, Prolog and who knows what). So: studying Perl will help make you a better software engineer, you can then apply that in whatever other language is required on that day for the current job.

That said, I think most systems I have worked on in C++ and Java could have been written in Perl 5 or 6 equally well. Some things would have been easier, some others harder...

robertlemmen | 7 years ago | on: Confessions of a recovering Perl Hacker

I do write in golang for money, and in Perl 6 which unfortunately noone pays me for. The two languages are so fundamentally different that I find it hard to even compare them!

Golang certainly is quite efficient, probably close to C or C++. It also has lightweight threads which are great and terrible at the same time: you can take the thread-based concurrency model further without resource problems. And the CSP approach helps to make that somewhat safe. But at the end of the day any concurrency built on threads, even lightweight ones, is problematic.

It is a ridiculously low-level in terms of abstractions language though, just a tiny notch above C. Perl 6 is quite on the opposite end of that scale.

For me the most important differences are cultural however: Perl 6 is quite open and inclusive, both people and the language it self. TIMTOWTDI. I don't think I can or want to describe the Golang culture, but it certainly is quite different.

The good thing about Golang is that as a language it is so simple/primitive that you can easily try it out for yourself and get a comprehensive picture over a weekend.