I think perl gets a bad rap because if you are not familiar with it the syntax is hard (bad I think) $_ and <> are confusing to those not used to them. I've used a lot of languages and the perl syntax still throws me sometimes.

Personlly I find perl code hard to read, there are worse, C++(STL) and scheme come to mind. I write mainly in C and ada and use perl/tk for testing. I used to do a lot of java. We also use perl instead of shell scripts because its more cross platform.

However using perl to program our applications is not an option, as quite frankly its not reliable enough and has too much non-deterministic behavour plus it doesn't have some of the constructs we need. Its not strongly typed makes it easier to write prorgrams, however this can make the software less reliable if not used very carefully. I think exception handling in perl might me somewhat lacking to but I'm not entirely sure of this.

I can see writing small to medium size applications comfortably in perl. I perfer to write anything with a gui using java/eclipse. I like java alot because I find the class libraries a quite good and cross platform. This is a Personal preference I'll freely admit.

I'm always an advocate of trying whats out there and using the right programming language for the job. Perl is great for a lot of things, but its not the be-all end-all programming language although cpan has alot of functionality.. No language is best at everything.... yet. Heck I didn't like ada at first, now I like it a lot..

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