Where have all the Pikers gone?

[Duke Normandin]

Long time passing ...

Is this list/language THAT dead?
No community chatter? At all? No users?

Maybe everybody is on IRC maybe? Is there an IRC Pike channel?

--
Duke

[Chris Angelico]

It's been pretty quiet here. The language itself still sees changes
though, and I'm currently browsing the 34 commits since I last pulled.
So the language isn't dead even if the mailing list is quiet.

ChrisA

[Duke Normandin]

Good to know! This Pike noob was getting worried! It just seemed to
me - at first glance - that Pike should be as popular in the Web
development domain as Ruby for example. I was beginning to think
that Pike was all but buried!
--
Duke

[Chris Angelico]

Hmm, Pike's a bit more niche than Ruby, so it's never going to be
quite as popular or as visible. But it is incredibly useful, and as
such, won't die easily :)

ChrisA

[Duke Normandin]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2021 15:53:56 +1100
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> > Good to know! This Pike noob was getting worried! It just
> > seemed to me - at first glance - that Pike should be as popular
> > in the Web development domain as Ruby for example. I was
> > beginning to think that Pike was all but buried!
>
> Hmm, Pike's a bit more niche than Ruby, so it's never going to be
> quite as popular or as visible. But it is incredibly useful, and
> as such, won't die easily :)

Out of curiosity, what IS Pike's niche? For some reason I always
supposed that it was web back-ends.

BTW, IS there an IRC channel for Pike users?
--
Duke

[Chris Angelico]

That and MUD servers, largely. It's also very good at eternal uptime
(since it makes on-the-fly updates easy). I use Pike for my MUD
server, my MUD client, my Twitch channel bot, and a variety of other
things. Of course, it's also a general-purpose language with a rich
standard library, so there'll be times when it's the right choice even
if it isn't specifically its niche (for example, I have a savefile
analyzer for Europa Universalis IV written in Pike, partly to take
advantage of socket services and async I/O, and partly because of the
LR Parser module).

> BTW, IS there an IRC channel for Pike users?

Not sure. I don't use IRC, other than for my Twitch bot.

ChrisA

[Duke Normandin]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2021 16:06:23 +1100

Awesome! So it seems to me that Pike should be able to give Ruby,
PHP, Perl, Python etc a good run for their money in the Web
backends domain. So what's kept it from being a strong contender?

I'm just wondering what's wrong with ti? The docs? The community
somehow? Poor marketing? Not noob friendly? What?

I'm not trolling! I just want to get a sense of what Pike is all
about and where its heading. TIA ...
--
Duke

[Stephen R. van den Berg]

Duke Normandin wrote:
>Awesome! So it seems to me that Pike should be able to give Ruby,
>PHP, Perl, Python etc a good run for their money in the Web
>backends domain.

It does, actually.

> So what's kept it from being a strong contender?

>I'm just wondering what's wrong with ti? The docs? The community
>somehow? Poor marketing? Not noob friendly? What?

If you want to generalise (it's never good to generalise), I'd say
it is "poor marketing". Then again even that is a very loosely defined
term.

>I'm not trolling! I just want to get a sense of what Pike is all
>about and where its heading. TIA ...

I'm using it (very succesfully) for my own:
- Various custom data-conversion import/export scripts.
- Web backend to some websites.
- REST-API backend for some services (either high performance
or high security; it can excel in both).
- High performance custom SMTP server implementation.
- High performance interface to PostgreSQL (yes, Pike has better
database drivers than the standard libpq drivers that come with
PostgreSQL).
- To interface to the API of various cloudservices (e.g. Google Cloudservice).
--
Stephen.

[Duke Normandin]

On Fri, 20 May 2022 12:55:32 +0200
"Stephen R. van den Berg" <s...@cuci.nl> wrote:

> Duke Normandin wrote:
> >Awesome! So it seems to me that Pike should be able to give Ruby,
> >PHP, Perl, Python etc a good run for their money in the Web
> >backends domain.
>
> It does, actually.

It's odd then that Pike is never mentioned on Slashdot or Hacker
News etc! There's not even an IRC channel for it. Other than your
own site, do you know of any others besides roxen.com?

> > So what's kept it from being a strong contender?
>
> >I'm just wondering what's wrong with ti? The docs? The community
> >somehow? Poor marketing? Not noob friendly? What?
>
> If you want to generalise (it's never good to generalise), I'd say
> it is "poor marketing". Then again even that is a very loosely
> defined term.

Poor marketing was my first impression. That's why I suggested that
the Pike language should show up on https://learnxinyminutes.com/.
Free advertising and could be great advocacy.

> I'm using it (very succesfully) for my own:
> - Various custom data-conversion import/export scripts.
> - Web backend to some websites.
> - REST-API backend for some services (either high performance
> or high security; it can excel in both).
> - High performance custom SMTP server implementation.
> - High performance interface to PostgreSQL (yes, Pike has better
> database drivers than the standard libpq drivers that come with
> PostgreSQL).
> - To interface to the API of various cloudservices (e.g. Google
> Cloudservice).

Swell! Wouldn't your success be an inspiration for others to at
least test-drive Pike? A real, juicy, no-holds-barred, language
flame war would be just the thing! On IRC/Hackers News/Slashdot! LOL
Just kidding! But you get the point hopefully. Exposure! Exposure!
Exposure! Hopefully this would also result in more tutorials,
How-Tos, etc and therefore more hits on search engines.

My 2 cents/pence/farthings/et al
--
Duke
** Text only please. Bottom post works best for me **

[Lance Dillon]

I've also written a couple things. A library for interfacing with spacewalk, and another for nessus security scanner.  Plus a few random things here and there.  Mostly quick and dirty things...

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, 20 May 2022 at 23:51, Duke Normandin <dukeo...@gmx.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 20 May 2022 12:55:32 +0200
> "Stephen R. van den Berg" <s...@cuci.nl> wrote:
>
> > Duke Normandin wrote:
> > >Awesome! So it seems to me that Pike should be able to give Ruby,
> > >PHP, Perl, Python etc a good run for their money in the Web
> > >backends domain.
> >
> > It does, actually.
>
> It's odd then that Pike is never mentioned on Slashdot or Hacker
> News etc! There's not even an IRC channel for it. Other than your
> own site, do you know of any others besides roxen.com?
>

My Twitch channel bot runs its own web interface, if that counts.

https://sikorsky.rosuav.com/

I take advantage of Pike features to run that site with real-time
updates (via websockets) that slide to the latest code every time I do
an update (even without reconnecting the socket). Very handy when
live-streaming code changes (although I do occasionally manage to
segfault it).

ChrisA

[Duke Normandin]

On Sat, 21 May 2022 00:02:17 +1000
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:


> My Twitch channel bot runs its own web interface, if that counts.
>
> https://sikorsky.rosuav.com/
>
> I take advantage of Pike features to run that site with real-time
> updates (via websockets) that slide to the latest code every time
> I do an update (even without reconnecting the socket). Very handy
> when live-streaming code changes (although I do occasionally
> manage to segfault it).

Goes to show that Pike has the necessary horsepower. It seems that
very few people globally know about its strength and potential.

[chikega]

1. I’m a new learner. It's interesting to see results on Google Trend comparing various high-level programming languages like Perl, PHP, Ruby, Lua. When I punch in 'Pike programming language', I get this: "Hmm, your search doesn't have enough data to show here." :-/ 
   
   https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=lua,ruby,Perl,PHP
   

Cheers, 

Gary

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, 21 May 2022 at 09:42, chikega <chi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I’m a new learner. It's interesting to see results on Google Trend comparing various high-level programming languages like Perl, PHP, Ruby, Lua. When I punch in 'Pike programming language', I get this: "Hmm, your search doesn't have enough data to show here." :-/
>
> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=lua,ruby,Perl,PHP
>

I usually explain to people that Pike is an obscure, but excellent,
language, with similarities to Python, C++, and various others, with a
focus on networking. But it's impossible to sum up a programming
language in a single sentence without omitting a lot of what makes it
great :)

ChrisA

[Stephen R. van den Berg]

Duke Normandin wrote:
>"Stephen R. van den Berg" <s...@cuci.nl> wrote:
>It's odd then that Pike is never mentioned on Slashdot or Hacker
>News etc!

Well, I occasionally mention it in replies to stories on Slashdot, but
yes, there hasn't been sexy enough news about Pike for a while
to actually bother to push it to the frontpage of Slashdot or similar.

> There's not even an IRC channel for it.

Actually, there is: #Pike on irc.libera.chat (as I just found out).
The channel has been opened by an old time Pike hacker, I'm not
sure he still does Pike, but I'll join the channel by default from now
on, so it can be used for interactive questions and discussions.

> Other than your
>own site, do you know of any others besides roxen.com?

The Roxen webserver, the open source version, is probably running
very few sites still; the commercial version is probably running on more
sites, but my impression is that it is not growing very fast.
Roxen tends to target large customers (mostly newspapers, apparently these
days).

>> > So what's kept it from being a strong contender?

>> If you want to generalise (it's never good to generalise), I'd say
>> it is "poor marketing". Then again even that is a very loosely
>> defined term.

>Poor marketing was my first impression. That's why I suggested that
>the Pike language should show up on https://learnxinyminutes.com/.
>Free advertising and could be great advocacy.

The more you plug it, the better the exposure gets.

>Swell! Wouldn't your success be an inspiration for others to at
>least test-drive Pike? A real, juicy, no-holds-barred, language
>flame war would be just the thing! On IRC/Hackers News/Slashdot! LOL

:-). I never shy away from healthy discussions.
Then again there is only so much time one can spend advocating.
I think the reality here is that most Pike users and developers are:
a. (Too) well educated.
b. Well over 40 (there are exceptions), and thus (family)life takes its "toll".
c. By trade, probably not supersocial, otherwise you are not into programming.

All these facts combined kind of cause the effect that Pike as a community
so far has not been as effective as it could have been to attract new users.

>Just kidding! But you get the point hopefully. Exposure! Exposure!
>Exposure! Hopefully this would also result in more tutorials,
>How-Tos, etc and therefore more hits on search engines.

No argument there, I think everyone would agree here.

Objectively speaking, the advantages/disadvantages of Pike (in my eyes) are:
Bad:
- Small community, so not enough people creating modules/chipping in.
- Cannot be compiled into the JVM or Javascript or WebAssembly.
- Not native concurrent multithreading (global interpreter lock).
Good:
+ Syntax is C/C++/Java/Javascript/C# like.
+ Very powerful string/array/hash-mapping handling.
+ More efficient CPU and memory usage than you'd expect from
an interpreted language (or Java).
+ Small but well educated community, thus the modules that
ARE available are mostly high quality implementations.
--
Stephen.

And perhaps a small plug for www.modelfkeyboards.com for those that missed
the memo. They can still be ordered till the end of this month.
I received mine 3 weeks ago: typing as god intended ;-).

[chikega]

Being new to Pike, when I first looked at the Pike Hello World program, the syntax, at first glance, reminded me most of the D language which also uses 'write' and a somewhat similar 'std.stdio'. 🤠

Cheers, 

Gary