Wednesday 2 September 2009 @ 6:46 am
During the YAPC::EU 2009 conference in Lisbon, I heard many times that Perl is NOT dead. Interesting, I never considered Perl to be dead. It is funy thing about human brain, it skips the word NOT. So the message I got is: perl is dead. If so many people try to convince me that “perl is NOT dead”, there has to be a good reason that other people think it IS dead. What can this reason be? Old beliefs about perl? Rise of new languages like python, ruby, groovy?
And, more important for myself – what should I do?
There are several things:
- spread the word that perl is great and not dead, by for example joining ironman blogging chalenge
- wait, and do nothing – if perl is good then it may defend itself without my help
- learn a new language, to be safe. Or brush up old good java or C-something.
What do YOU think about it?
See also:
- Perl – why not popular
- Working as perl developer – telecommuting
- WTFish side of using Perl talk at YAPC::EU 2009 – slides
- Nice people I met at YAPC::EU
- Nice people I met at YAPC::EU – continued
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3 responses to “Perl is dead – or is it not?”
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Join a Perl project that helps newbies or makes it easier to develop modern web applications in Perl, or write games in Perl just to name a few.
Skip the negations – just tell everybody that Perl is alive and kicking.
I love Perl, but the main problem I see with writing modern web applications in Perl is with problems setting the up development environment.
I use Perl for lot’s of day-to-day tasks and cronjob programs at work. But it’s the last tool I think of when I’m freelancing and client comes to me needing a website.
In darn near any hosting account the client has I can install WordPress in one click, and write PHP plugins that very quickly get the job done. Or better yet, install the Thesis theme and use custom functions instead.
BTW: I have tried setting up Catalyst multiple times in multiple environments and have always met with failure. IMHO, it only works if you have complete control over the environment, which is often not the case.
I would love to see a WordPress-type app written in Perl, with a one click install, but it ain’t gonna happen–I’ve been waiting too long [Prove me wrong please and I'll happily eat my words as I'll have a dream development environment].