Re: Why do people say 'Perl' is dead?!?!

[morgon]

You can argue forever about what constitutes a dying language from a purly technological or sociological point of view.

Imho Perl has still a great community and is a good (and even improving) technology.

But (at least that is my impression) there is one area in which Perl is definitely dying and that is as an asset for contracting jobs.

There are of course still Perl-jobs to be had but most of the projects are not very interesting maintanance work only - and it is getting worse every year (or so it seems to me).

Maybe the situation is better if you go on a pay-roll for a company such as Booking but for freelancers I guess Perl in a terminal stage.

Or has someone different experiences?

[Your Mother]

Someone posted some graphs and such here on PM, sorry I’m too lazy Perl-virtuous to look it up, that job postings for Perl are actually pretty flat for a long time and much higher than some languages with more buzz like Ruby. My anecdote is in agreement: I consistently get 5–7 cold calls from recruiters/headhunters for Perl related jobs per year going on … I’ve lost track? Six years I think. My salary has steadily increased over the last 10 years as well.

[Anonymous Monk]

Those who say Perl is dead are mostly purist software engineers. I am an Aerospace/Mechanical Engineer and Perl is absolutely one of those secret little gems that can make you a hero. I have been using Perl and Tk and now Tkx since the mid 90's and am self taught. I don't want to learn C++ since I'm not in Software. Perl fit the bill perfectly for manipulating large pieces of data and even doing scientific programming and since I know UNIX, Perl was very easy for me to learn. Perl is alive and well and cherished by the non-software engineers. Only software purists will say Perl is dead.