So you're saying that every time someone figures out a new way to program, they should throw away their tools and rebuild everything from scratch? No thanks.
The reason I stick with Perl is because I can use all the "bad code" that happens to work, and replace it as time permits (or as I need to maintain and extend it).
No, I couldn't say that. What I'm saying is that the focus on "good" Perl came after Perl lost some serious hearts and minds to languages like Python and Ruby.
If you want to keep using Perl and enjoy the new stuff, that's great. For those who jumped ship and got up to speed on a new platform (as I did after 8 years of Perl), I don't see much reason to come back. Even Ruby's lacklustre performance is almost on a par with Perl now - http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al... - and Python is developing at a great pace.
I agree that there is no reason to switch between Perl/Python/Ruby. They are all the same language with slightly different punctuation.
I think Perl has better libraries, but learning those and discarding your experience with one of the other languages is probably not much of a net gain.
So you're saying that every time someone figures out a new way to program, they should throw away their tools and rebuild everything from scratch? No thanks.
The reason I stick with Perl is because I can use all the "bad code" that happens to work, and replace it as time permits (or as I need to maintain and extend it).