
The Second Age of Perl - icey
http://blogs.perl.org/users/jt_smith/2010/04/the-second-age-of-perl.html
======
buster
Pretty interesting is the TIOBE language index.. scroll down to the graph to
see some decline over the last years.
[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

Perl was overtaken by C# and Python in the last 2 years, for example.

I think it will be around for a lot of years, but in the end.. "it's dying"
describes the trend pretty much. Ada, Cobol, etc. are all still used and you
can earn quite some money when you know them, but i really wouldn't call them
"alive".

A lot of programs and scripts are written in perl, and even new scripts (if i
look at my company). But slowly all those handy scripts will be overtaken by
the "new" programmers that didn't start with perl but with ruby, python, php
and such.

From personal experience: Many employees at my company still use perl,
basically because they don't want to learn a new language and started with
perl, but all the new employees (like me) avoid it where they can and try to
"migrate" the company to other languages. The perl scripts written today will
probably be around for the next 5 years, but the next time they'll be in
another language.

At least i look forward for those scripts dying, because they regularly give
me major headaches when trying to fix scripts written by someone else 2-5
years ago. From all i do (that includes a lot of scripts) touching those perl
scripts is easily the most painful thing to do. I've wasted countless hours on
those "things" where i should've been productive.

~~~
autarch
TIOBE is crap. See Tim Bunce's analysis of TIOBE
([http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/04/12/tiobe-or-not-tiobe-
lies-...](http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/04/12/tiobe-or-not-tiobe-lies-damned-
lies-and-statistics/)) for details.

Why do people keep quoting TIOBE like it means something?

~~~
buster
Nahh, only because it's counting on google hits, it doesn't mean it's
worthless. Look at sourceforge.net and compare perl and pythons numbers (2700
vs 4200). And that's where i thought there may be much more perl projects on
sf.net since sf.net is quite old and may have a lot of abandoned projects.

It's also in conjunction with my own experience. There may be more job
offerings that mention perl (because of decades of legacy scripts) but in
general nearly every job interview we've had or every student working for us
didn't know perl. Especially for students: You don't learn Perl (thank god!!)
but C, Java, Python, Haskell.

~~~
draegtun
_Nahh, only because it's counting on google hits, it doesn't mean it's
worthless_

If that were true then you would see quite different results!

 _Look at sourceforge.net and compare perl and pythons numbers (2700 vs 4200)_

Sourceforge (<http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap>) shows Perl & Python with
8905 and 12,149 respectively. Certainly interesting to see that C# has even
more opensource projects on there than both Perl & Python with 12,192 :)

Still no good looking at one repo site without comparing with some of the
others for a fuller picture. Here are some other figures I just browsed for:

Freshmeat:

    
    
      * Perl   3898 - http://freshmeat.net/tags/perl
      * Python 3526 - http://freshmeat.net/tags/python
    

Github: (<http://github.com/languages>)

    
    
      * Perl  13%
      * Python 9%
    

When it comes to site statistics, always take them with a pinch of salt when
you try to imply meaning outside of their context!

------
titusd
I loved and openly defended Perl for years. Contrary to popular belief, I
still believe that you can write large, maintainable systems in Perl. It's
just that I think that you could write those same systems better in other
languages.

I no longer recommend Perl as a first language to learn: I think Ruby and
Python are better choices.

I no longer recommend Perl to experienced programmers: Clojure and Erlang have
more to offer to the Java or C++ expert.

Perl was very important and useful for a while, but at it's root, it's a
kludgy, annoying language, full of bad design choices.

I believe Perl has had it's day.

~~~
_delirium
As a language to write large systems in, I agree, but I still haven't found a
better shell-script-replacement language. Perl as a somewhat cleaned up
superset of bash/sed/awk/grep still seems better to me than the
alternatives--- when I try to write those kinds of scripts in, say, Python, it
ends up feeling clunky and verbose.

------
subwindow
General-purpose languages that are "born" successfully (manage to gain a wide
following) have a very hard time "dying" in the sense that everyone talks
about. New lines of code will be written for 30+ years after a formerly
successful language becomes functionally obsolete.

Perl already dead in the sense that it is no longer a "cool" language, and as
such there aren't going to be many passionate programmers picking it up.

Once a language has lost the ability to recruit talented and passionate
programmers, innovation dies soon thereafter. Perl may have new modules, but
I'm not sure many of them can be called innovative- most of it is just "Me
too!" kind of work.

~~~
draegtun
_Once a language has lost the ability to recruit talented and passionate
programmers, innovation dies soon thereafter_

Probably very true. However I see a lots of new talented & passionate Perl
programmers appearing at Perl meetings, on the blogospshere and with many new
code/CPAN modules. So your statement doesn't apply to Perl.

 _Perl may have new modules, but I'm not sure many of them can be called
innovative_

CPAN is having a "purple patch" over last few years. Lots of new and
innovative stuff have appeared and I see no reason for this not to continue

------
neilk
If the author is correct that developing in Perl is very different today, the
logical thing would be to bump the major release number.

But they can't because everyone already knows what Perl 6 is (and most people
have very negative perceptions of that). It would have been better to call
that project Perl 3000 or give it some code name. But it's too late.

I suggest calling the next release of Perl 5, Perl 7. If Perl 6 ever gets to
1.0, it can be Perl 8.

(half serious)

~~~
chromatic
Perl 5's major release number recently went from 10 to 12.

------
martythemaniak
"but the Second Age isn't just about code. It's also the marketing efforts"

Part of those efforts seem to be daily HN reminders that Perl isn't dead.

~~~
jacquesm
As soon as you have to start reminding people that X really isn't dead it's as
good as dead.

Perl isn't there yet, but the level of fanaticism with which the proponents
claim that it isn't dead yet has definitely been on the rise.

A language that isn't dead attracts new users without such noises. If you say
'x isn't dead' you automatically sow doubt about 'x'. Best to show great
examples in 'x' than saying 'x' isn't dead.

~~~
draegtun
I Agree.

However on the flip side if you keep hearing noises that "x is dead" then that
is more of wish (from the noise makers) rather than the reality!

------
lenau
Perl makes me happy every day.

------
InclinedPlane
Perl isn't dying it's just becoming less relevant. In, say, 5 years Perl won't
have the luster it once did, it'll be lumped in the same bucket as vbscript,
batch files, and maybe even COBOL. It'll be considered less well and less
interesting than PHP.

I like Perl, I think it's a solid language, but it's become stagnant amidst a
huge degree of innovation. It's an even more stagnant language than Java at
this point, and that's a serious cause for concern. All of the serious
problems with Perl programming remain, and are becoming ever more relevant as
innovation in other languages sharpens the contrast.

Perl has always had a very fundamental problem with naturally facilitating
high code quality, average developers with average skills find it easy to
create unreadable, unmaintainable, sluggish code in Perl. But so long as there
were good hackers out there in the Perl ecosystem there's been enough good
Perl code out there to counter-balance that. It takes a lot of experience and
discipline to write good Perl code, but there's been no shortage of people
with those qualities and an interest in Perl in the past. But now, there are
greener pastures for talented hackers. As the best Perl hackers evaporate away
off to concentrate on newer languages and technologies only the dregs will
remain. Without exceptional hackers innovating _within_ the language the lack
of innovation _of_ the language will become more apparent. Increasingly the
bulk of Perl code being written will be mundane and uninspiring, written by
talentless hacks who fall into every trap the Perl language has made for them
(and there are many). A language is ultimately judged by the work in it, and
increasingly that work will push the perception of Perl farther down the
ladder.

In many ways death might be preferable.

~~~
gamache
If you'd hit the 'reply' button seven years ago, you might have more reality
to back up your assertions, but now you're just plain wrong.

 _In, say, 5 years Perl won't have the luster it once did_

 _I like Perl, I think it's a solid language, but it's become stagnant amidst
a huge degree of innovation._

 _As the best Perl hackers evaporate away off to concentrate on newer
languages and technologies only the dregs will remain. Without exceptional
hackers innovating within the language the lack of innovation of the language
will become more apparent._

Perl's been on an upward trajectory for years now. The language and ecosystem
has steadily taken on features from Perl 6 and beyond, most notably the Moose
object system (which could totally beat up your favorite language's object
system in a fight). And the best Perl hackers don't seem to have gone
anywhere.

(And come on, you clearly _don't_ like Perl, so it's disingenuous to say you
do.)

~~~
sreque
I've already head this conversation at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1377077> about Moose. Moose is good, but
it's not that good, and certainly not nearly enough to make up for the
terrible language underpinning it.

~~~
jrockway
What language is not terrible?

~~~
alnayyir
J

Scourges weakling humans, lets me write code like a stack of paperclips.

~~~
forkandwait
OMG!!! I actually maintain J code!! There are, like, 10 of us in the whole
universe.

I think more people speak Quileute than still use J
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quileute_language>)... for good reason ...

------
lelele
Please let's not talk about Perl anymore. Let's just make it fall into
oblivion.

Perl and C++ are the programming languages I always recommend you avoid, if
you value your time. I've wasted my time to become proficient with both, I
hope you don't waste yours.

------
sliverstorm
So long as Perl is useful, I will continue to use it. It is still useful, and
so I continue to use it.

Perhaps for hacking up a fancy program it is a poor choice, but that's not
what I use it for. For me, Perl is a step above bash when it comes to
scripting. You can throw other languages at me all you like, but in my
experience it manages the task perfectly well, and is second only to bash
itself in terms of spread on Linux machines. Python is the only possible
alternative, and I have not yet seen a need to switch nor been convinced
Python is nearly as universal (plus the Python runtime itself tends to give me
more trouble)

------
someone_here
Doom! Doooom!

