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Mind, I'm not deeply involved in either the Perl or Ruby communities, but... The de jure successor of Perl 5 might be Perl 6, but the de facto successor is Rub
by njl 17y ago
Mind, I'm not deeply involved in either the Perl or Ruby communities, but...
The de jure successor of Perl 5 might be Perl 6, but the de facto successor is Ruby. That is where the momentum and mindshare has gone; my impression is that Perl is easing back into it's old home as AWK's big brother. In all honesty, how often do you hear about somebody writing a web application in Perl these days? While my personal experience isn't really admissible as evidence, all the people I know who used to write web apps in Perl are now writing web apps in Ruby. A bunch of the ones who used to do system administration with Perl are now working at Opscode doing systems administration in Ruby.
- berntb 17y agoIf you argue web apps, at least locally, PHP is kicking ass with Perl, Ruby and Python. Amongst others. (And then, the hype and FUD is quite heavy on the ground, re Perl. Not least on HN.)
- peterwwillis 17y agothis is, to me, evidence of why Perl is a great language. it's not something people pick up to write web apps. you can write very good web apps with it, but there are better options. but you can also use it to write virtually any kind of application - and the libraries and supporting modules already exist to allow you to complete it, quickly and well. you can probably use Perl for a wider array of apps than any other language (largely due to CPAN). i just wish people who don't know how to program with it would stop picking it up and getting things done. my company's 10-year old Perl webapps are still chugging along just fine, btw.