Is Perl Still Relevant?
In my latest Ask Tim column over on oreilly.com, I answer Jag Venugopal's question about perl:
With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et. al, has Perl lost its niche as a scripting glue language? The buzz is all around PHP these days and also around Python. The complaints about Perl 6's complexity are only getting louder. Besides, Perl does not occupy the central position in O'Reilly's offerings that it once did. Is Perl on its way out?Continue reading Is Perl Still Relevant?
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You don't have to tell us about ruby and rails! In fact, on another posting on this blog, we have a nastygram from a reader who thinks we're flogging Rails too much!
I agree that it's got a lot of buzz.
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tom [07.11.05 10:51 AM]
Actually, given the way the question is posed it's already outdated: The real 'leading-edge' buzz these days isn't around PHP anymore (and hasn't been for about a year now), it's around Ruby on Rails. Given the progress of Ruby and Python (both being much 'cleaner' languages than Perl)in recent years, Perl fell off the radar screen for a lot of folks around 2001. And in the race between Ruby and Python, my money is on Ruby in the long term. Sure Python is currently ahead, but Ruby seems to have greater appeal to the large number of Perl folk who are looking for the next language to jump to. The nascent popularity of Rails has definately boosted Ruby's visibility up to match Python's. Rails is also a great showcase for what is possible in Ruby: Ruby's anonymous code blocks (which Python lacks) helped make Rails very approachable.
By the Fall there should be something like 4 Rails books available (the first one will be available in a few weeks from the Pragmatic Bookshelf), a half dozen or so by the end of this year. The early adopters adopt without books. When books start hitting the shelves we'll see the second wave of adoption (books are often seen as lending legitimacy).