Dave Cross has posted Dotcom Survivor Syndrome – How Perl’s Early Success Created the Seeds of Its Downfall about current misconceptions about Perl and how those misconceptions came to be.
Can We Move On?
Dotcom Survivor Syndrome is real. So is Version Number Paralysis. Together, they’ve unfairly buried a language that remains fast, expressive, and battle-tested.
We can’t change the past. But we can:
- Acknowledge the emotional and historical baggage
- Celebrate the role Perl played in inventing the modern web
- Educate developers about what Perl really is today
- Push back against the assumption that old == obsolete
Certain vendors have certainly played the appeal to novelty fallacy to its outer limits to sell their own gimmicks while simultaneously maligning Perl. That'll take a lot to overcome, but is doable.
