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If we compare languages by number of jobs offers, and take into account just one site with job offers, we may think that:
Perl as good as java, python and PHP are way above
There are a few articles about growing popularity of open source and languages like PHP and Python in corporate world. See cnet, o’rly and gazeta (in Polish).
Until now, java and .NET seemed to be the most popular in corporate world. Now is time for Python, PHP, Perl, and open source solutions. For example Farmville, very popular online game, with million of users, is said to run on LAMP stack.
There is also opinion that companies like Zend or ActiveState give “corporate face” to open source. And yes, open source is not free (as free beer) – you often have to (or are willing to) pay for support, knowledge, contractors etc. (vide MySQL Enterprise).
But, returning to the title of this post – on the graph in cnet article- you can see that there is the same amout of job offers for java and perl developers, some more for .NET, much much more and rising for PHP and even more (and rising more) for python.
Inevitably, the parrot 2.0.0 was released. Obviously it can run Rakudo implementation of Perl 6, and Tcl, JavaScript, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, PHP, Python, APL, and a .NET
The quite usable version of Rakudo Perl 6 is planned to be released on spring (northern hemisphere’s Spring, probably 
). We”ll see how useful it is and what one can do with it 
On the other hand, Perl 5 is still being developed, and is very useful and commonly used. This gives Perl 6 developers no urge to do it faster. This may cause two problems:
- it may never be finished, as Duke Nukem Forever
- it may be finished, but not widely used (as some people like Perl 5, and others already switched to Python )
What do you think about Perl 6?
Bing’s (a Microsoft search engine ) bots made something DDoS-like on CPAN site. Why? It may be either error (“Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by stupidity.”) or something made on purpose (for conspiracy theories fans).
Quote form CPAN Testers blog (more details):
If you’ve suffered any problems accessing any of the sites, the databases, the CPAN mirror, etc. from the CPAN Testers server last night, please direct your wrath at Microsoft. Last night the msnbot took out the CPAN Testers server with a dedicated denial of service attack. As a consequence measures are now being put in place to completely ban the msnbot from accessing at least the Reports site, and probably all the sites on the server.
Perl testers pointed out that msnbot does not obey robots.txt file.
YAPC::EU::2010 is coming!
It will be held from 4 to 6 August 2010 in My One Hotel Pisa Conference Centre
( http://www.myonehotel.it/eng/galilei/default.asp – map: http://bit.ly/8FN64F – quite near to the airport. )
Twitter: http://twitter/yapceu2010
Website: http://www.yapceurope.org/2010/
YAPC::EU::2010 conference theme will be: The Renaissance of Perl
The conference theme is the Renaissance of Perl. This topic pays homage
to Italy's role as the cradle of the Renaissance, and acknowledges how
Perl is far from a dead legacy language
The more I hear that Perl is not dead, the more I wonder whether it is acutally dead ;-p
YAPC Europe Foundation is nonprofit organisation, helping with organisations of YAPCs and Perl Workshops in Europe. They help by giving kickstart bonuses for conferences, workshops, hackathons and provideing payment processing.
Recently they published financial reports http://www.yapceurope.org/finance/reports/ and cashflow diagrams for past conferences ( http://www.yapceurope.org/finance/cashflow.html ) .
From the financial report for 2009 one canread that much of their expenses is bank and payment processign expenses – about 100 EUR for Bank Account Charge and 600E for payment.
If you are going to organise perl conference or other similiar event with the help of foundation – read the cashflow diagrams carefully, to avoid sudden shortage of cash
Frozen Perl is a three day event held at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center in Minneapolis, MN. The main event is a one-day, two-track workshop on Saturday, February 6th. Saturday will begin (after the greeting) by keynote by brian d foy.
At Friday there are two classes: Effective Perl Programming by brian d foy and Intro to Moose by Dave Rolsky. Each class is $100, also 4 student seats at $25 each.
At Sunday, there will be hackathons ( http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/wiki?node=Hackathon )
More info here: http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/
It seems that there are lots of conferences and other events about perl – both global (like yapc) and local (like Bulgarian Perl Workshop http://event.perlbulgaria.org/sofia2010/ ). So maybe perl is not dying at all
New version of perl – 5.11.3 was released. The next version will be (as they hope) 5.12
Waht is new in perl 5.11.3?
- Perl is shipped with Unicode version 5.2, itself released in October 2009.
- Perl can now handle every Unicode character property.
- The experimental ‘legacy’ pragma, introduced with Perl 5.11.2 has been removed. Its functionality has been replaced with the ‘feature’ pragma.
- Numerous CPAN “toolchain” modules have been updated to what we hope are the final release versions for Perl 5.12.0.
- Many crashing bugs or regressions from earlier releases of Perl were fixed for this release.
In my opinion is is very good, that perl 5 is still developed, as version 6 have still a long way to go, before it may be used (first, by enthusiasts, then by coders, next by big companies that need reliability and stability)
Here is a nice tool to convert for example different characters to percent encoding for URIs, 0x notation, decimal code points etc; (by Richard Ishida):
http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/
Ok, it is not strictly related to perl , but I guess it may be handy for people that were interested in the “utf at LAMP horror” cycle.
Those fancy wine opinions were created not by fancy wine tater, but a Perl script!
- Premature and overcooked red. Resembles licorace, american-oaked toast and lingering prune juice. Drink now through never.
- Fun and focused Rhone. Forcefully bites you with mint julip, putrid fruit punch and lingering spice. Drink now through 2009.
- Premature but morally superior Syrah. Hints of salt, over-oaked juniper and atomic traces of melon. Drink now through graduation.
Greg Sumner created script ( perl source: http://www.gmon.com/tech/sillytng.txt ) that may replace wine tasters and their head-spinning wine notes.
Something more stupid:
- Lean but french-oaked Cabernet Franc. Kicks you with super-glue, understated melted chocolate and bashful whole-wheat bread. Drink now through eternity.
- Markedly improved and whimsical Voignier. Throws out french onion soup, soggy smoked oyster and forward melted chocolate. Drink now through 2005.
- Grossly overweight but equally musty white. Attacks with nectarine, big and plump vanilla and total absence of currant. Drink now through whenever the cows come home.
See it for yourself and play with it
http://www.gmon.com/tech/stng.shtml
http://www.gmon.com/tech/output.shtml
Continuing the never ending saga of perl / utf horror:
<form method=”post” accept-charset=”utf-8″ action=”…”>
Well, I never used it… and my web app works.
Is this accept-charset really needed? Do you know?
