Re: A Melancholy Monkday

[xunker]

I hit this post by accident, but it struck a chord with me. My user info says I've been a registered user here since late 2000.. of course I haven't posted anything here for about ten years. Perl was my first "adult" language, where I was writing code meant to be used by other people, not just myself. I later on (2002-2007) created a ridiculously popular web site from Perl -- about 9 mil pageloads/day.

But I've left perl since then. Why?

I got really frustrated at the lack of progress in both the language and the culture of those who used the language. It wasn't just the perpetual treadmill of Perl 6, it was the complacency of the community around the lack of change. At the time I felt that there was no drive for us to re-evaluate established patterns, we were quite happy to keep using the same approaches as before and that there was no will to explore alternatives. I didn't want to spend the rest of my career doing what felt like maintenance programming.

That may well have changed since then (it was 7 years ago), but that was my reason and I believe others felt the same. I don't hate perl.

How would Perl need to change to get me to come back? I don't know. I suppose, like any language wanting to grow mindshare, it would need to offer a way for me to do things I'm already doing but in a better way.

[GrandFather]

(intended as an entirely neutral question) what language attracted you away and what are the main features of your currently preferred language(s)/tool(s) that you suspect aren't provided by Perl?