I like Perl. It's usually the fastest way to get stuff done. It also brings out the programmer within the programmer. Any jerk can write obfuscated Perl. A good

I like Perl. It's usually the fastest way to get stuff done. It also brings out the programmer within the programmer. Any jerk can write obfuscated Perl. A good Perl programmer writes clean, easily re-used and modified code. It's a very hacker friendly language. As to its decrease in popularity, I'll point to two factors: (1) the rise of PHP, which took over most of the daily web-based tasks that Perl uses and (2) the rise of frameworks, which meant that people writing web sites were using newer languages so they didn't have to re-roll the basic stuff with each project. Perl didn't compete in that area until much later. As far as its daily use, I still see it all the time and like many programmers, I implement new Perl code frequently. The flexibility across operating systems is a nice bonus. For anyone who wants to see Perl written with grace and foresight, try these resources: http://www.perlmonks.org/ http://www.perlmonks.org/ http://www.pm.org/ http://www.pm.org/