this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Neither will the trendy new language, distro, or standard
perl 5.10 for life!
Python, which I hate the syntax of with an actual passion, legit offers more library support though, so is this a lost cause at this point? Especially with junior devs, who to the extent they think they know how to program at all, do so in (well, JavaScript mainly iirc, but afa back-end specifically) Python?:-(
As a Perl dev, I wouldn't recommend it at all at this point.
20 years ago, it had the best publicly available repository of libraries with CPAN. That's been long surpassed now.
10 years ago, it still had a fantastic community of highly concentrated competence. A lot of those people are gone, and the ones left behind are some of the more toxic ones.
It's going to stay a long tail language like COBOL where it never really dies. If you have experience in it, you can make a lot of money at it, and will for a long time to come, but it's hard to break into.
My company is moving towards Elixir, which I like a lot. Realistically, I'm at least 20 years from retirement, and I expect the Perl platform to be around in some capacity by then. I might even be the one to shut the final lights off on it as I walk out the door.
The syntax of Perl seems superior to me, though partly b/c I just like the style of semi-colons and braces as in C++, and also so that you can edit it in any text editor you choose, not just those IDEs or ones that will show you the difference between a tab and some spaces.
But mostly perhaps b/c I have not invested any efforts into actually learning Python the same way that I did Perl - that O'Reily book that explained, from the perspective of the literal creator, why things work in Perl as they do, was a fantastic read!
The Grim Perl Reaper?
Sure they do. They just come with exciting, new problems
Sometimes a change is as good as a rest