On 8/26/23 00:51, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote:
I have twenty-year-old perl scripts that still work just fine, but in my
experience, even couple-years-old python code most likely won't.
I love both perl and python, but have to say that perl stability is
partly due to the fact that its development stalled at some point so
that the current perl is 5.34 and Perl 5.0 was released in 1994.
I feel that this stasis is not necessarily so bad---not that perl is
perfect, but it just works so well for short targeted data manipulation.
Reminds me of the well know quote(1) : "If you don't want your
environment/language to develop and improve, you have no heart; if you
insist on it constantly changing, you have no brain".
The downside of course is that perl is not getting much in the way of
new tech like machine learning, AI/LLM, etc, and is not a good match for
large projects because of too much of duck typing.
(1) "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If
you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head"---it's
widely mis-attributed to Winston Churchill but he didn't use it apparently.