[Info-vax] Most popular application programming languages on VMS ?

[IanD]

On Friday, January 11, 2019 at 10:21:45 AM UTC+11, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/10/2019 2:01 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> > The question then becomes why is Python used directly as the scripting
> > engine in multiple applications I have encountered yet I have still to
> > see a single Perl based scripting engine in an application ?
> > 
> > I wonder if it's because Python comes across as being way easier for
> > non-professional programmers to learn when compared to Perl.
> > 
> > In terms of syntax difficulty, I would say Python was more like an
> > OO based Basic while Perl was more like a C++ language and the Python
> > style probably appeals more to the non-professional programmers using
> > some of these applications.
> 
> I think most people consider Python easier to learn than Perl,
> which probably is an underlying driver for the change in
> popularity.
> 
> And for programming languages there are a lot of inertia.
> If a language becomes popular in problem domain X then
> people start choosing it simple because it is popular
> (being popular means that it is possible to get people
> with the skills, get help on the internet etc.).
> 
> Perl was pretty big in at least two areas:
> * scripting on commercial Unix'es
> * CGI scripts
> and both commercial Unix'es and CGI scripts usage has decreased.
> 
> Python got a stronger footprint with the Linux and Windows
> crowd and their usage has increased.
> 
> And Python scored big by getting into to big data
> and analysis field - that use has exploded the last
> decade.
> 
> Arne

I started trying to learn Perl way back. Version 5 was just coming out. Version 4 was not OO

Version 5 started to bring in OO but people were already getting tired of Perl. Programmers who felt that writing terse code was cool certainly didn't help Perls cause

Code maintainability was becoming more and more important so those Perl gurus who wrote code as terse as possible (there were competitions around doing code in as few lines as possible) ended up shooting Perl in its own foot

At the time I had purchased the Perl cookbook in my quest to learn but one person I worked with, his wife was a maths/computer teacher and they were getting excited about Python (they had initially looked at using Perl) because it was easy to learn, already OO and the kids picked it up easily. 
Python coding rules also make it difficult to write unreadable code, unlike Perl that allows you to go crazy and requires the programmer to deliberately code in a readable fashion

Python's success is very much a story of simplicity and growing from the ground up. Now that it's being pushed in the major universities, it has resulted in more popularity 

There's been a lot of work done in terms of performance too, so much so that's it fast for almost every task required now. If you really need speed, you can easily integrate with C or compile your code under Julia (within reason of course)

It's popular for many reasons and will remain so for a while yet but like all things, some future paradigm will come along and it will fall from grace and something else will take it's place