Revisit Perl programming after 20 years - using Perl to code a generative language model

20 years ago, I started shifting development to Python. In this video, I revisit the Perl programming after 20 years and use it to build a simple generative text model based on Markov chains. I have forgotten many things about Perl, so a Perl guru will note many issues as I'm developing the code. The end product worked remarkably well, and I enjoyed getting reacquainted with Perl and its community.

I'll post a link to the github repo in the comments so you can take a closer look.

[lorensims]

Perl is still the lead in Regular Expressions. 
I still judge programming languages based on how close their ease of use for regular expressions comes to that of Perl.
So many programs and programming languages depend on the pcre (Perl-compatible regular expressions) library.
The syntax of Perl is based on that of the Unix utilities grep, sed, and awk, just some of the tools Perl was designed to replace.

[johnnapiorkowski]

Welcome back to Perl, we need more people like you!

[RandalLSchwartz]

At 06:47: the hash is initialized with the stringification of a newly created empty hash as a key, and undef as a value. It definitely is not making an empty hash.

[SavvyGamingLink]

I just finished an internship at AMD, and I inherited a handful of report parsing scripts that I had to maintain and supplement with new creations. Every single one was in Perl, and almost all of my work used the language. So even working on the design of AI accelerators, Perl remains in use

[a_tabaza]

Never used perl, but this is very interesting to see as someone who's into LLMs, video production value is also remarkable, great work for real, kudos!

[alanclaughan]

Wow, this video brought back so many fond memories. Perl was my secret weapon for normalising data and repetitive task automation. It took little to no time to throw something together that made the C guru's turn green with envy - yes it was slower. Yet it got to the results much faster. Like yourself, I finally succumbed to the python flashy lights. I just blew the dust of some of my 30+ year old perl apps. Took a minute to get them running, but most still function perfectly. Had to look up quite a few short codes 🙂 Love your casual but informative style of video. I get the feeling this channel is going to explode!

[niuniujunwashere]

i am probably a younger user of perl here - i can say that i am very proud to use perl to test code from my college java programming class :) perl syntax feels so similar to shell script with the heredoc and backticks, except i know that every byte i feed into it will get taken care of...

template toolkit is now my favorite templating language and i want to look into how perl sockets & CGI works.... i think python and perl are both beautiful languages, but lately i can't get over how smooth it is to deal with text streams in perl :P (mutable for-loop variable is a dream-come-true!)

[brtastic]

Good job, amazing how much you can do with Perl even without expert knowledge of it.

[gugod]

Markov chain seems to be perfect example for practicing the language of Perl!

[IrredeemableGhost]

Perl will always have a special place for me

[Pattelito]

I really enjoyed this video. Keep up the good work :)

[yaroshchenko_coder]

Thanks for the interesting lesson on the Perl 5 programming language

[andresgz]

The 'split' function typically takes a regex pattern as its first argument. However, if a string containing only a single space character is used (as shown at 10:24), it emulates the behavior of AWK: any leading whitespace in the expression is removed before splitting occurs, and any contiguous whitespace (not just a single space character) is employed as a separator.

[fplove]

Latest Perl _has_ signatures for subs, anyway. You can avoid the use of @_ and $_ at all.

[haf]

I also came back. I had moved to other languages almost 20 years ago, when the Perl6 story frustrated me. Now that Perl6 is out of the way (Raku), I was curious and checked how Perl5 had evolved over the years. Some release notes and the latest version of Randal's book "Learning Perl" made me think: Yes! That's what I was waiting for.
When it comes to versions, I count the 5 as part of the language's name and don't care if there will be a bulk of changes worth renaming Perl5 to Perl7. It is a highly efficient language and I will continue to use it.
By the way, I think at 6:46 you assign a hash reference to a hash variable. Perhaps the {} should be ().

[heroslippy]

Learned Perl recently for one of my courses which has since transitioned to python.
I tend to use it for scripting on windows (instead of batch and whatever powershell uses).
Its pretty good.

[snepmilian]

Just for the bookkeeping: Perl nowadays *has* function arguments. The author kept his coding style from the 2000s, so unfortunately this video does not really reflect on what has changed since then, rather it shows, how much he still remembers. Still, great video!

[flyinglack]

I think readability is why I prefer Python over many languages. Of course, it is up to the developer to make a readable code.

[jasonchesshir]

Don't forget "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister" as an acronym for Perl.

[wbiker]

Nice. I love Perl and seeing this I get some sort of missing feelings. I enjoyed writing Perl code. However, Raku is my language of choice nowadays. It has all of Perl plus some improvements like concurrency, signatures and a lot of other stuff right from the beginning. I wonder what would you think about Perls successor?