Re: Perl is dying

[Anonymous Monk]

I've been a big fan of Perl for many years.

I agree with the author of this article. Its been in decline ever since 2003.

All you need to do is look at the cold hard stats. They don't lie and its not an opinion from a prima-donna hacker.

* mod_perl
* Other Apache mods

Some points

* There is a snobbish attitude the Perl elite have towards web development/web appliation servers.

Get on #perl EFNET and try asking a web question. You will come out bruised and bleeding. There is very little support from the Elite of Perl given towards web. This a major minus for perl as other forge ahead with NET, J2EE, Python, PHP very little innovation goes into perl for web/web application.

* Late to the game and its over.

Taking a lesson from the corporate world if a competitor comes up with a new technological innovation and your later then 3-6 months in coming up with your version, forget about retaking market share. Even if its not perfect or buggy, corporations will try to get something out before they lose their customers completely. I would argue that in terms of innovation there is very little gap between Apache::ASP (My preference over Mason) and PHP but no one knows what it is and no one cares because all the interest went to other languages.

Per the graphs Perl has been losing marker share since 2002 and like global warming I think its to late for Perl.

Many say that Perl6 is going to be Perls saviour but what is it that the masses will use it for? To me its a science project that only the elite can fulling utilize. Unlike Perl scientist most of us who use Perl live in the real world and our jobs demand productivity for the quickest turn around time which is what languages that support web / web applications give us. I think that Parrot will only be of interest to the Perl elite as has been the case with every other innovation in Perl and not for the masses. I do hope I'm wrong.

* Protect user base.

The other major group of users are Systems administrators. More needs to be done to protect this user base. I'm sure those reading this posting can think of several scripting languages that have gone by the wayside because of their failure to innovate to meet the needs of their users.