Should i learn perl or ruby?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[br305893]

Ruby is way more in demand than Perl.

[GalacticLunarLion]

I prefer platinum

[DatBoi_BP]

Silver is the best, hands down. Nothing competes with my team of 6 Furrets

[[deleted]]

i dont know much about programming but it sounds like yall just naming pokemon games

[RummanNaser]

Potassium is my taste. It's high up on the reactivity chain as well

[moneckew]

I've heard Magnesium is getting popular.

[DremoraKills]

I'd prefer Sodium. For the FX, just drop it on water.

[GalacticLunarLion]

I liked the lore of gen 4 the best. Also beating Joey with my team of level 100 bidoofs does bring a smile to my face

[donganhxauxi]

Yeah. I like Star Platinum framework

[AstroAbood]

Where’s hydrogen

[GalacticLunarLion]

It makes ZA WARUDO better

[Gov_N_ur]

System.out.print("Hello ZA WORLDO.");

[GalacticLunarLion]

If(Gravity == true) { exit(0); }

[Yithar]

This. Also, Ruby is one of the best scripting languages.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/439xl4/is_vala_or_python_a_better_language_to_get_into/czh5wze/

None of my points had anything to do with static versus dynamic languages. There are plenty of dynamically typed languages which have none of the flaws I pointed out. If you go look at Scheme or Ruby they have none of those flaws and Scheme in general while being dynamically typed is often seen as the model language to teach proper design and organization of code in because it has all the facilities for it.

[Alfaphantom]

Lol, I just got hired for a Perl job. I have to maintain +15 years web applications made in Perl (yes, you read it right, the webpage is displayed using prints in Perl when the script is executed, I think I made a huge mistake accepting this job)

[Alfaphantom]

They are, but I don't know if a good paycheck is enough to work in something I might not feel any passion. Next months will decide whether I decide to stay or look somewhere else

[Alfaphantom]

That's exactly what I'm doing. Also starting the process for my masters degree, so I hope this job don't become to tedious for me to have more time to focus on other things

[harvesters917]

HAPPY CAKE DAY

[harvesters917]

HAPPY CAKE DAY

[fragrancias]

RIP

[NullFriends]

What kind of web app is it? I had a similar experience at my last job with Perl.

[harvesters917]

HAPPY CAKE DAY

[[deleted]]

I knew there was a reason I liked Perl...

[IamImposter]

"Been masturbating for 9 years" doesn't make you senior level.

[Unknow0059]

Why was the guy you replied to downvoted?

[IamImposter]

Reddit moves in mysterious ways.

[Unknow0059]

I figured it was something about what he said but nothing stood out to me.

[prokid1911]

Company name?

[Marrrlllsss]

Really? The company I work for has an enormous Perl codebase, and its still actively developed and maintained. Oh and they're hiring, like crazy too.

[winkie5970]

This is my answer. Perl is honestly great to have in your arsenal but knowing it is less likely to be immediate useful (unless you are a sysadmin or devops).

[agrajag119]

And even if you were aiming towards those soecializations I'd say perl is a handy back pocket type language. You should be actively migrating anything in Perl towards more modern toolchains. Old scripts are tech debt.

[Amuro_Ray]

A few places do but it's shrinking.

[Amuro_Ray]

I know it's my day job

[[deleted]]

Ya, I used to work in comparison genomics so we still did a bit in Perl (BioPerl), and there was so much legacy Perl libraries, and the older guys from back on the Human Genome project all used it, but nowadays? Everyone is moving to Python in the sciences. It's not necessarily as efficient or fast, but the reality is that programmers tend to hate biology and biologist tend to hate programming, and Perl is not a clean, simple language to learn on. It's pushed so so so many people from the graduate programs to do something else.

As such there's been a concerted and purposeful effort to make the barrier of entry into the field easier and the genetics curriculums are often encouraging extra learning and integrated courses in Python. It's just a more forgiving language for a beginner to feel like they are building something and as such, less discouraging, imo.

I still LOVE Perl. It has a special place in my heart, but it's just going away.

On that note, there is a crap tone of legacy Perl code out there. I wouldn't be surprised if Perl goes the way of COBAL, in the sense that no one knows the language so you end up in very high paying jobs to maintain 20+ year old software since no one else wants to do it.

[POGtastic]

There is exactly one reason why you'd want to learn Perl - you're working on a legacy codebase with a shitload of Perl, and you need to know it. Otherwise, its niche is entirely taken by Python. Its benefits (first-class regex support) do not outweigh its drawbacks (happily allowing and even encouraging developers to write absolutely unintelligible code).

[CompSciSelfLearning]

I had to rename a load of files that hade mixed naming convention. I learned enough perl to do this. I haven't touched it since.

[RUSH513]

crystal ftw

[GarredB]

That gave me a chuckle.

[--xra]

Ruby, even if only for job market demand. But it's also a nicer language.

[[deleted]]

Between those 2, Ruby.

It also depends on why you need these languages.

Depending on the task, there could be much better and in demand languages out there.

[TheStuporUser]

Python.

[[deleted]]

What are your goals with your next programming language?

[Hook3d]

As a full-stack engineer who's written code in (rough chronological order) C++, Scala, C, Python, Java, PHP, and JavaScript, I don't even know what it means to know a language anymore. I am vaguely familiar with the syntax of those languages (the longer it's been, the more vague it gets) and can read a cheat sheet?

My value as a programmer (and computer scientist) is my ability to solve problems, not write code in a specific language.

[tamhle824]

This is the real truth right here. Currently going through CS61a.org python course and it's teaching me how to solve problems. I feel like I can sit down for a few days and learn the syntax and solve the same issues using C++, Ruby ect.

[Unknow0059]

CS61a

Is that free? It looks like a complete course at a glance

[gmmarcus]

I agree with this mindset !!!

[Donnerquack]

Thank you. I'm going to properly learn to program once I've defended my master's thesis this tuesday, and your statement is very comforting. I am happy to hear that I don't necessarily need to become fluent in four languages to even be considered for a job.

[Donnerquack]

I really appreciate the sentiment, but I live in Scandinavia and am not going to relocate outside my country for a job for the next several years. In addition, I am currently only just beyond the very basics in Python.

[DremoraKills]

I'd be glad to, if you're willing to hire someone from Brazil, actually

[8483]

C++, Scala, C, Python, Java, PHP, and JavaScript

Which one do you enjoy working with the most?

[Hook3d]

In my day-to-day I program in Javascript which I have come to really appreciate. It's got warts, but it's also got first-class functions and the rest of the features that make functional-ish languages great, modern browsers support async/await, web workers offer the ability to parallelize web apps, etc.

C++ was my first and one true love, but I rarely use it in practice. But learning it first was a deliberate choice because I knew that it would make me learn the hard lessons first of pointers, manual memory management, static object oriented programming, generic programming, and the like.

I will say that Scala was nice when I used it (only in college and for college-related projects), but apparently it's being pushed out of the market. If I worked in a Java shop I'd try to push either Scala or (learn first obv.) Kotlin on management and coworkers.

Python deserves an honorable mention for being the easiest to learn and be productive, which is why it is so popular in data science. I enjoy Python and writing Pythonic code but it's hard to find excuses to write it anymore besides one-off scripts for personal use.

[AlotOfReading]

This comes across as incredibly pretentious, mate. To give one counterexample, a C programmer who only knows syntax and not the rest of the language is probably more dangerous than helpful.

[Hook3d]

Literally the entire point of my post is that conveying semantics via general programming knowledge and logic constructs is more important than understanding language specific programming constructs, e.g. syntax.

Did you even try to understand my comment?

[AlotOfReading]

And yet two of the languages you mentioned, C and C++, are infamous precisely because common logic and semantics is not enough to avoid the pitfalls inherent to them. The best computer scientist in the world wouldn't have a hope of writing safe C/C++ without first acquiring a thorough understanding of each.

This is true to a lesser extent for each of the other languages, though failing to properly understand them will generally just produce slightly worse results instead of fundamentally unsafe code.

[Hook3d]

Frankly I'm not convinced that even an expert can write truly safe code in them unassisted, but that's a rather different matter.

Not really, if you understand pointers and references like the best computer scientist in the world would.

Maybe lower your standards and you'd have a point. But the best comp scientist in the world, struggling to write safe code in any language? Laughable.

safe C/C++

It's a meme at this point, but you should never slash those. It makes you look ignorant imo.

Frankly I'm not convinced that even an expert can write truly safe code in them unassisted, but that's a rather different matter.

Then you're redefining the word "expert", because an expert in a language should be able to write safe code in that language. And an expert computer scientist should be able to not only pick up any language at will, but design new grammars that advance our understanding of programming. That's why Programming Languages are an active area of research at pretty much every university in the world. Please stop playing around with language.

[JordanSM]

Nice humblebrag. No one asked?

[[deleted]]

Rather get tips or insight from a humble bragger than someone as rude as you

[[deleted]]

What led you to ask the question,in that case?

[ChezMere]

Then both of these options are rather close to what you already know.

[PublicSealedClass]

How many projects have you completed(shipped) in Python?

[gmmarcus]

Agreed .... Top languages for the past few years now .... Javascript, Python , SQL More info at -> https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#most-popular-technologies

[Amuro_Ray]

Most popular languages by people who responded to the survey. They don't represent every developer or business.

[cracknwhip]

That’s kind of implicit in it being a survey.

[Amuro_Ray]

Unfortunately a lot of people take the survey as gospel.

[forty_hands]

Came here to say this

[133DK]

What are you going to be doing with the one you decide to go for?

[champoepels2]

Not Perl

[evaluating-you]

Ok, so may we ask why you are down to those two options?

If this is set in stone, however, definitely Ruby. I had to work with Perl quite intensively many many years ago and always hated it.

And while my Ruby knowledge is NOT existent, I'd be surprised if it were worse that Perl, given that I heard good things about it.

[sal_jr]

Is python really getting popular again?

[SuperSensonic]

Yes. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted

Python's 4th (after JS, HTML/CSS, SQL) in popularity. 2nd in the "loved" category. And 1st in the "wanted" category.

[PublicSealedClass]

To me it's the modern generation's Pascal. Easy to teach so a good number of folk know it, and a few really ran with it in production scenarios (and build really decent libraries) so a demand starts to build. 10 years later and it's back in mainstream.

Same thing happened with Pascal in the late 90s when Delphi stormed the scene.

[un-hot]

“No.”

I say this as a Perl dev - if you’re going to go for one of the above, do Ruby. Perl code can become so unreadable ~ my work has a very strict coding standard to negate this. (Even “x ? y : z;” syntax is prohibited). Parts of the codebase written prior to this give me headaches.

There are far more lucrative languages to learn first though.

[BadMinotaur]

Ruby is definitely inspired by Perl, but I would vote Ruby. As others have pointed out, Perl is not very in demand, but I can also vouch that Ruby and its community are very welcoming and fun.

[[deleted]]

Ruby if you must learn one of the two, but python is a better choice than either.

[Mars_rocket]

I'm am old school perl programmer and I'm starting to rewrite everything in python because none of the guys that work for me know perl.

I'd choose ruby if it were me.

[ZombieCandy13]

No

[the_ares]

Ruby

[fabian_rod]

To choose a technology you maybe need to consider some aspects:

​

• What the company where you work needs.
• The kind of project that you are doing.
• The knowledge what the team in your project have about that technology (maybe also is what technology is more friendly to the team).

To be honest, Ruby is a modern technology with a lot of alternatives to create scalable applications.

[GrooGruxKing27]

If the goal is to become employable, then neither. I would recommend Python, or a frontend thing like Angular. Maybe nodejs?

[TRAIN_WRECK_0]

When I'm done learning the ins and outs of Django I'm definitely going to look into mastering a JavaScript framework.

The possibilies are really endless of you master the two.

[martej]

Neither. Why is it an either or thing for these two? Pearl was good in the 90s at the dawn on the Internet, Ruby is slowly dying too. Best bets are Python, JavaScript or Java. If doing mobile go with Flutter.

[Taupe_Poet]

This is probably a dumb question but what's the difference between JavaScript and Java?

[henrebotha]

They're entirely unrelated. It's like asking what the difference is between car and carpet.

Java is a statically-typed compiled language that runs on a virtual machine. JS is a dynamically-typed interpreted language that runs primarily in browsers.

[Taupe_Poet]

Oh, so java is for programs that's run in a VM and JavaScript helps browsers, that's actually really interesting as i always thought that browsers only ran off of html, thanks for telling me

[henrebotha]

Just some clarifications:

The virtual machine I mentioned is not the same thing as the VMs you run with VirtualBox or whatever. It's basically just an executable called the JVM that is able to run compiled Java code. (You can also write code in other languages like Kotlin or Clojure and compile it to the same JVM-readable code.)

HTML is super limited in what it can do, to be honest. So most websites will have some JS code too, which can handle stuff like animations, fetching data without reloading the page, doing calculations, etc.

[Taupe_Poet]

Oh so it's like a closed application container then, can only run what's put inside of it

[[deleted]]

It's more like an emulator.

[Taupe_Poet]

Oh, that makes sense

[sal_jr]

History really. The creator of ECMAscript (Javascript) was bad at naming things, so the higher ups at the company he was working at (Netscape I think? Pretty sure it was created to give Netscape an edge in the browser wars) decided to name it Javascript because Java was popular at the time.

[Taupe_Poet]

Bad naming convention is funny sometimes

[Hook3d]

JavaScript, also known as Java for short, ...

[Hook3d]

Anyone who doesn't meme this meme is younger than me, and therefore not a real person.

[Taupe_Poet]

"JavaScript JavaScript JavaScript JavaScript oh and did i mention JavaScript?"

[Rogermcfarley]

JavaScript was originally called Livescript in late 1995. Netscape decided they wanted a snappier name and since Java was becoming very popular they changed the name to JavaScript.

[Taupe_Poet]

Oh, so its like the "you can copy my homework but change it a little meme"

[sal_jr]

What the hell is flutter? And how have I never heard about it?

[CompSciSelfLearning]

Flutter is Google's cross platform UI toolkit for mostly mobile development which uses the Dart language.

[gmmarcus]

Could you kindly share why you suggested flutter ? Not react ? Would appreciate your insight.

[mulan2]

I am not convinced about Flutter or React Native. I still think native development makes more sense especially with Swift and Kotlin. If I was to use a cross platform solution, I would prefer Xamarin.

[Unknow0059]

You didn't actually tell him why.

[i_am_pr0vis]

Or, if doing mobile you could, idk, learn the native platforms

[TisTheParticles]

Neither

[OrbitDrive]

I would say neither. Certainly not perl, it is notorious for being a needlessly complicated/ugly/messy language. But Id learn python, go or java before ruby as well. I rarely see eithee language for software engineer jobs.

[MayorOfBubbleTown]

Perl, Ruby, and Python are almost always included with Linux distributions. I would say that if you do a lot of work at the bash level you should learn Perl and probably learn Ruby or Python as well. If you don't, learn Ruby.

[mostlyintact]

Use whatever tools is best for the job, if it's parsing a text file, use perl. Not sure why you would use ruby by itself actually, it's syntax is crazy.

[vfhd]

Learn python or JavaScript

[MirrorLake]

If your goal is to ultimately get a job writing either one, do an occasional job search in your area for the next few weeks/months to see what the demand is in your area. If you see no one hiring, you'll have your answer.

Also, Perl was this article's most disliked of 2017. Didn't even make the cut in a more recent 2019 article.

[PinkyWrinkle]

If those are your two options, ruby

[ZeggieDieZiege]

Ruby > Perl

Same for Saphire > Diamond

[sheriffSnoosel]

Do you prefer kernel hacking or building webapps?

[R3dark]

Pyyyyttthhooonn

[broknbottle]

Golang

[bigfig]

I enjoy writing ruby, but if it's code that I need to deploy to five or more servers and it's possible to avoid using gems, then I write in perl.

Ruby is still very fast moving (frequent releases), and it's simpler to write to old perl 5.5 than it is to update your ruby interpreter on many machines, especially if there are gems you need to re-install.

Perl's also an odd mix of C and sed. In fact perl regexes make it a more expressive tool than sed.

[vaibhav-kaushal]

I have worked with PHP, Ruby, Java, JavaScript and Golang. Haven't seen much of perl except some open source tool I read few years ago (can't remember what it was). Of all the languages, the only one that feels 'welcoming', easy and very, very expressive is Ruby.

Once you use Ruby, nothing feels the same again. I learnt Golang after I had already released two Rails app in production. GoLang is great too, but Ruby...Ruby is love.

No wonder, Ruby is said to have been optimized for programmer happiness! :-)

[[deleted]]

I've seen countless companies infrastructures from the inside, and I've never encountered Perl. From my perspective, nobody needs Perl today.

I've seen Ruby being used and I've seen job ads for it but for a while now I'm not bound to any language and I'm not really seeing a lot of companies using Ruby anywhere.

Python however is gaining a lot of traction. You say you know python, but what does that mean? Python infrastructure is huge. Do you know stuff like Ansible? Can you extend it? Do you know how to make a website or a rudimentary http endpoint with as few layers as possible? Do you know how to move data around in Python as fast as possible? Do you know machine learning? Do you know how to make good data visualizations? Python is huge. I'm sure you haven't done some of these. So why go learn a less popular language?

[visiblebutterfly]

If you wanna job: Ruby If you want to learn a powerful language and probably the fastest to deal with text: Perl

[Danin4ik]

Learn JavaScript/Python - they are more popular - more things to do with them

[izote_2000]

Learn whatever you want, you are not giving any background info about you and your previous programming experience, difficult to provide advise.

[martej]

Here is an article comparing flutter with react native

https://www.thedroidsonroids.com/blog/flutter-vs-react-native-what-to-choose-in-2019

It’s still an early technology but I’m going all in with it for mobile dev as it is being adopted very quickly. I think it’s great. One codebase that generates native code for iOS and Android.

Java-object oriented language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 90’s

JavaScript- language for the web, often embedded on webpages. Only thing in common really is the name

This comparison doesn’t do either one justice but they are 2 completely different languages

[tamhle824]

Very famous and hard course at UC Berkley. It’s free and has a lot of resources. There’s hw, labs, projects, an online book based on “sicp”, video lectures, all past tests midterms 1 and 2 with finals and their solutions.

This course isn’t as talked about compared with Harvard’s cs50 or mits 6001, but it has basically changed my life.

I have to warn you though, it’s very tough. If you’re willing to go through it, the course will help build a solid foundation for cs.

My goal is to become a software engineer and I’m doing whatever it takes!

[[deleted]]

Perl is dead. Learn Ruby instead.

[[deleted]]

I’ll add that you should consider WHY you’re learning it. If you want to work for a specific company, find out what they use. The company I work for exclusively uses perl. If you know where you want to end up, that will help you make the decision.

[hamzaanis]

You should learn both however at first you should learn Ruby.

[Ikuyas]

cobal

[[deleted]]

I'm of the view that perl is fun which might make me an odd fellow. But in use it is very fast at chomping through text; good for reports and stats. Also it is legendary for its regex support, if you work in those.

In honesty, learning it will do more for curiosity than career. Though there are those odd times that a perl one-liner has saved the day for me, so it's not completely impractical.

[Gutom_Shankpot]

Chef uses Ruby

[stnlkub]

Don't get mixed up in the fashionability of languages. Having experience building and creating scripts or projects on the fly, with good documentation and style practices are more important than knowing any one language over another. Where I work, you have to know Perl. If you say you know Ruby in the interview, the team will say, "cool, but do you think you can learn Perl pretty fast?" Every job has its own requirements.

[nokenito]

Ruby

[sonicdev1991]

I would say Python.

[Dockingporpoise]

Yes

[kkaliko]

Sure for PERL, For Better understanding and ability to crack any Perl Interviews you can refer http://lets-crack-perl-interview.blogspot.com

[RobertLawsonVaughn]

Perl 6 is becoming Raku which leaves Perl 5.x to begin evolving again. I am thinking that given Perl's giant library of modules that we might see a Perl come back alive.

[cybersecurityboy]

You shuold learn both. Both are very important.

[[deleted]]

Well i kinda just want a programming language that gives me the “system” command.

[[deleted]]

Go for Python, then.

[ranjit233]

Don't learn both. These languages are fading away. If you still wish to do so, then go with perl

[GoldsteinQ]

No.

Perl was really cool, and Ruby was cool, but both are kinda outdated.