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Let's be honest, Python and Ruby have eaten Perl's lunch. All it's got left to argue for it is CPAN. The first startup I worked for, in 1999, was built entirely

Let's be honest, Python and Ruby have eaten Perl's lunch. All it's got left to argue for it is CPAN. The first startup I worked for, in 1999, was built entirely on Perl. At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now.

absconditus 15y ago
Outside of the start-up world Perl is still heavily used and Ruby is probably not quite as popular as you believe.
- ajross 15y ago
  In fact Ruby is completely unknown out of the trendy web startup set. I routinely have to explain it to people I meet. Python is huge though. Most people know it, many like it. Though I find far fewer people love python than perl5 or Ruby. But perl is still there. It's still my tool of choice for most scripting, and for some fundamentally good reasons that are unlikely to change in the near future. Perl scripts fit more naturally into single files. They deal better with the enclosing unix environment (i.e. they expose things like signals instead of trying to abstract them). Operations like pack/unpack and I/O piping work in fewer tokens and more clearly than in other environments. It's just a great language. It makes me sad that everyone wants to flame about it.
- cageface 15y ago
  So why are none of the heavy users of Perl willing to stump up some cash to fund its development?
  - Mithaldu 15y ago
    They actually do. Check the Perl Foundation website. :)
rjbond3rd 15y ago
> At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now. Isn't a good choice for _what_?
- cageface 15y ago
  Any new development, really. Don't get me wrong. I think Perl was a brilliant piece of language engineering in its day and its influence on subsequent "scripting" languages is unmistakable. But why would anyone without significant prior investment in the language choose it for new work now? It's just too cryptic and idiosyncratic compared to the obvious alternatives.
  - phaylon 15y ago
    I just want to note that I would answer, if the question would seem in any way sincere. But I don't think I could say anything that would bring you to consider that other people might have other opinions, and that they're not simply invalid because you don't share them.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      You understand that besides "opinions" and "sharing them" there is also an underlying objective reality right? At least in an engineering practice, like computing. One doesn't have to consider "other opinions" or deem them "valid", if one knows them to be wrong. And in our profession we have lots of ways of knowing wrong from right.

absconditus 15y ago

Outside of the start-up world Perl is still heavily used and Ruby is probably not quite as popular as you believe.

ajross 15y ago
In fact Ruby is completely unknown out of the trendy web startup set. I routinely have to explain it to people I meet. Python is huge though. Most people know it, many like it. Though I find far fewer people love python than perl5 or Ruby. But perl is still there. It's still my tool of choice for most scripting, and for some fundamentally good reasons that are unlikely to change in the near future. Perl scripts fit more naturally into single files. They deal better with the enclosing unix environment (i.e. they expose things like signals instead of trying to abstract them). Operations like pack/unpack and I/O piping work in fewer tokens and more clearly than in other environments. It's just a great language. It makes me sad that everyone wants to flame about it.
cageface 15y ago
So why are none of the heavy users of Perl willing to stump up some cash to fund its development?
- Mithaldu 15y ago
  They actually do. Check the Perl Foundation website. :)

rjbond3rd 15y ago

> At the time it was a good choice. It isn't now. Isn't a good choice for _what_?

cageface 15y ago
Any new development, really. Don't get me wrong. I think Perl was a brilliant piece of language engineering in its day and its influence on subsequent "scripting" languages is unmistakable. But why would anyone without significant prior investment in the language choose it for new work now? It's just too cryptic and idiosyncratic compared to the obvious alternatives.
- phaylon 15y ago
  I just want to note that I would answer, if the question would seem in any way sincere. But I don't think I could say anything that would bring you to consider that other people might have other opinions, and that they're not simply invalid because you don't share them.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    You understand that besides "opinions" and "sharing them" there is also an underlying objective reality right? At least in an engineering practice, like computing. One doesn't have to consider "other opinions" or deem them "valid", if one knows them to be wrong. And in our profession we have lots of ways of knowing wrong from right.