Dead Languages

August 14, 2006
Perl and Python. Now Perl there is already angst about its demise, I can second it: Perl is dying, Netcraft may later confirm it, but I can do it now. Python dying is a bit more eyebrow-raising, since bittorrent and yum and other GTK apps are done in it and until today I assumed it had a future. But not with me. It seems to have become impossible to crosscompile the thing. In both cases the problem seems to have been a lust for bootstrapping because it was a "real language". Because it is a "real language", when it makes itself it just HAS to do it in its own language. So Perl first makes a miniperl app that is then used to complete the build of the rest of perl. Because perl must be so damn indispensible, you can't even think of making Perl without doing it in Perl. Likewise Python insists on building its modules via a Python script, run using the python it just compiled. These conceits of the language devs mean that crosscompiling is impossible, because the python or miniperl that was built WILL NOT RUN on the host that is doing the building since they are compiled for another type of CPU. The bootstrapping concept, so they can hold their head up in academia as a Real Language, destroys the possibility for crosscompile. Dudes, you killed your languages for crosscompile. There is a lot of crosscompiling going on and it is only going to increase. Now PHP was easy to crosscompile. Lots of people sniff at it as not being a real language, but look, I can run it down on my ARM box no trouble, and I can't use Perl or Python. Sell Perl! Sell Python! Buy PHP!!!!