My wife asked me: why did you choose perl? I told her that it is easy and robust, allows quick development, effective writing scripts that will be used just one time etc. To back it, I gave a few examples: when you want to sort, you just use sort, no need to implementing it. When you wat to open file, you just open file. And those regexps – are awesome great.
Then, my wife asked me another question – ok, if it is so great, why do so few people and companies write in it?
This was question I couldn’t find answer for. I told her about that is not so easy to make .exe file from perl script, but as I heard strawberry perl is good in doing it. Or PAR. I’ll have to look closely at them both in near future. Anyway, in C/C++ it is the most natural way to run the program – to make executable of it 
In Perl it is not the natural way. And some companies prefer to have executable files, for example to sell them
Anyway, that is good question: Why Perl is not so popular as C-something, or java?
See also:
- Perl is dead – or is it not?
- Perl as good as java, python and PHP way above
- installing from CPAN without root
- WTFish side of using Perl talk at YAPC::EU 2009 – slides
- Advertise Perl with Gabor
Tags: ironman 
4 responses to “Perl – why not popular”
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See this blog entry: http://mechanicalrevolution.com/blog/dynamic_languages_and_money.html
I think, Perl is no so popular, bacause it’s hard for newbie to install modules for it. CPAN is cool for use for users who’s working in linux, but the most mass of people works in windows and for them needed CPAN with GUI and one button “install this module”
I don’t think Perl is unpopular, relative to the other scripting languages. Java and C# own the bulk, which is no surprise given that most of the programming work is in big enterprises and they always go for Java or MS. Reasons for this fact are varied and explored elsewhere. Perl is not far behind PHP, which is the most popular of the scripting languages. Given how much easier PHP is to build quick and dirty apps, the fact Perl is so close is very positive. So personally I don’t think Perl is far behind statistically. Mindshare I think we have an issue, but that’s going to change with time and effort.
Java is very popular because of corporations. Maybe same for C#. PAR creates executables easily – I done it for perlcritic, ack and web program with Catalyst-based server.
zloyrusskiy:
ppm in ActivePerl
john napiorkowski:
On IRC, Perl is more popular than PHP. Perl has it’s own IRC network and large number of regulars on other networks.