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@Perl Here’s a BRILLIANT cheatsheet by @shiar of significant changes to the #Perl #programming language, from 2000's version 5.6 to 2023's version 5.38: https://sheet.shiar.nl/perl

Apart from being a valuable reference, it's a compact argument against the belief that Perl has stagnated.

And yet your old Perl code still runs on today's versions. Don't be surprised. We value your time and ours.

https://toot.community/@shiar/111858636016600099

This entry was edited (9 months ago)

reshared this

in reply to Mark Gardner

Honestly, I think the thing that works against #Perl and #Raku the most is that they don't work natively in the browser or on mobile.

I love both languages and want to see them prosper.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Jeff KC1PYT

#JavaScript kinda ate the browser. But #WebAssembly (a/k/a #Wasm) offers a way out: https://WebAssembly.org

And #Perl can run via #WebAssembly and #Emscripten in the browser: https://WebPerl.ZeRO-G.net

This entry was edited (9 months ago)

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Mark Gardner

Yes, *eventually* I expect just about everything to get ported to it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the hold up is there is no generalized mechanism to access the DOM from WASM, right?

So stuff has to run WASM, then spawn JS (expensive) and then make API calls to JS to interact with the DOM. Stop me if I'm wrong.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Jeff KC1PYT

@KC1PYT I don’t have any direct #Wasm experience so I can't confirm or deny without doing the same research as anyone else. Maybe somebody receiving these group messages can opine.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Mark Gardner

@KC1PYT
Without reading the whole thread, yes, any calls from wasm to WebAPI have to go through the host environment (JS). It's not too slow in practice but could be much better considering that wasm is generally faster than JS.

Also, you'll need to provide a small JS bridge, like what Go has:
https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/misc/wasm/wasm_exec.js

in reply to Mark Gardner

That project seems semi-stale. There aren't any recent commits though there are decently recent comments in the few issues that are opened.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Jeff KC1PYT

@KC1PYT “Recent” is in the eye of the beholder. I haven’t personally used #WebPerl, but it appears to be based on a slight fork of #Perl v5.30 from 2019: https://github.com/Perl/perl5/compare/maint-5.30...haukex:emperl5:emperl_v5.30.0

As with anything, it needs someone with an itch to scratch and enough skills and tuits. The primary author is employed doing #Python now, so it's a fine time to pick it up unimpeded.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Mark Gardner

This is brilliant though and well formatted too.

Perl reshared this.

in reply to Mark Gardner

I am not a big fan of the language itself, but I deeply respect and admire the API stability and long-term vision. That is rare these days, and should be applauded.