joe Hall [08.17.05 07:56 PM]

many employers consider knowing perl to be a programming litmus test... figuring if you can write perl and read other's perl, you're probably not such a bad coder.

  Pat [08.17.05 09:22 PM]

People writing python and ruby article comparing it to perl?

  Douglas Clifton [08.17.05 11:23 PM]

Because Perl rules? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Still one of my all-time favorite languages. I've been through 3 copies of Programming Perl, not only because the new editions are improvements (and the language matures) but also because the old ones simply fell apart from so much use.

  Ben O'Neill [08.18.05 12:50 AM]

Poor people being forced into learning Perl having to look up manuals for the language? ;)

  Mohsen Basirat [08.18.05 03:06 AM]

perl never die , do you know how many enterprise applications used perl in core,as i know, Oracle DB and AS , HP OpenView,Alcatel Management Software, VMWare Esx/GSX for Management API, this is a long list . if you know any one add here,
Long Life Perl

  Clarence Wooten [08.18.05 07:35 AM]

Yes. Perl will never die... it's far too entrenched... however... as you stated at OSCON... Ruby may be "the Perl of the Web 2.0 era." The Rails framework being its primary driver. I talk about it in my most recent post, "Web 2.0: An opportunity for venture capital, or just a boom in lifestyle businesses".

  Robert [08.18.05 07:59 AM]

Ruby is not all it is cracked up to be and still has some serious shortcomings. While Rails is giving it steam, I don't see the steam lasting. I see a lot of posts about people trying Rails "just to see" but not a lot of posts about "I left xyz language for Ruby because of Rails".

  Theory [08.18.05 08:42 AM]

New books from MJD, Simon, and Damian. Every Perl hacker in the universe is buying at least one of these, and usually two or three.

—Theory

  Kevin Farnham [08.18.05 05:39 PM]

I make my living as an independent programmer and writer on software development. As such, knowing/guessing/assessing which technologies are likely to be important in the future is critical for me. I know perl. I have learned python and I am investigating ruby/ruby-on-rails.

My assessment is that, of the three, perl offers the most programming power and flexibility by far. The main claim of those who prefer python over perl is that others can read your code and you can remember your own code 6 months later if you program in python, but this is not the case in perl (look at many python books to see this statement). Python also has the very nice Tk and imaging library capabilities. Ruby/ruby-on-rails is new, and may well be better suited for the types of development PHP is well-suited for, but has deficits in many areas that are well-covered by perl.

As a writer, I may find more opportunities by focussing on ruby/ruby-on-rails and on the less documented aspects of python. But as a programmer, as a developer building applications for the public and for my own use, at this time I definitely prefer Perl. It's power is unsurpassed in scripting languages, in my opinion. And, perhaps unlike others, I actually can remember why I wrote a line of code in a certain way 6 months or 2 years or 8 years later.

As a programming language, including library add-ons, perl is simply much more powerful than the alternatives.

  wenjian yang [08.19.05 05:49 PM]

I work in bioinformatics, and spend about 30% or less time programming. Most the projets are small and the main focus is really not on programing, Perl simply gets the job done.

I didn't try to learn a new language for quite awhile (no time/need), and just started C#/ASP.Net for a moderate size project. It makes a lot of things easier, but sometimes I do miss the flexibility and raw power and, if I may say, simplicity of Perl.

The cliche that different jobs need different languages. In my case, I still feel perl fits in very well and emotionally hope perl will not be marginalized.

  Mike Scott [08.20.05 04:20 AM]

I've been writing OO Perl for about 10 years now, very happily.

Just this week I was creating dynamic subclasses on the fly. Saved me a lot of time and duplication. Write code to write code. Perl is very friendly towards that.

While I'm at it. I've seen some discussion recently about programming as art.

Speaking as someone who managed to escape the art ghetto thanks to a few years of study at the University of O'Reilly - and who has seen enough of everybody's code now to know what it looks like - I think it would be much better if programmers were encouraged to aspire to be watchmakers instead.

Perl let's you cram it all in there, it just needs the necessary sense of self dicipline to keep it intelligible.

Cue for Perl Best Practices, which - though I disagree with it at times - reads very nicely. Many thanks.

  anon [08.30.05 01:28 PM]

Do you know why it is that we perl programmers are not wasting our times in any type of debates on whether or not we are alive or dead? We are busy building new applications

Also I would really wish People would understand....
Python Perl and PHP are all very related heh......

  haha [08.30.05 01:34 PM]

Theory writes "As part of the developer release of Bricolage 1.9.0 Punkin last week, I blogged about some of the cool new features, including native PHP 5 templating. How does it work? It's thanks to the new PHP::Interpreter module, which embeds a PHP interpreter in Perl. The upshot is that this module can be used to execute PHP code that can reach back into Perl to use Perl modules. For PHP developers, CPAN envy is a thing of the past."

Get the Drift yet?

  dorry [05.31.07 05:28 PM]

The nightmare of Catalyst forced me turn to Ruby on Rails, though now I'm also looking at Django, Wicket, and Stripes.