Perl is the language and perl is the program, so in short.. PERL is not used (..and I have edited my title ;).

> Also, do you have a designated person to welcome newcomers?

Many of us welcome newcomers answering to their first post, and being true what haj said, there are some Monks Orders to keep the monastery clean and enjoyable.

> I see that a balance between quantity and quality is important for survival.

I have a little list you can be intersted in: Perl is dead.. and in the last 20 years I always seen people saying that Perl is diying or already dead.. it seems to me well alive and somehow rebirthing. This does not means it is a fashion language for managers.

Perl is very stable, super supported, runs almost everywhere and it has probably the best repository in respect to other language: CPAN. You can glance a (non comprensive) list of selected best modules at Task::Kensho

From a Larry interview (ok is bit old, but booking, duck-duck go, opensrs.. many big companies still use Perl heavily or mainly):

    Marjorie: Who is using Perl and how are they using it?

    Larry: A couple of years ago, I ran into someone at a trade show w
+ho was representing the NSA (National Security Agency). 
    He mentioned to someone else in passing that he'd written a filter
+ program in Perl, so without telling him who I was, I asked him
    if I could tell people that the NSA uses Perl. His response was, “
+Doesn't everyone?” 
    So now I don't tell people the NSA uses Perl. I merely tell people
+ the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all.
[download]

L*

Hi Discipulus thanks a lot for replying to my message. If you don't mind I'd like to reach out to you for further questions related to Perl (if I don't get the answer in the forums of course) directly. Saluti !

would the Founder of PERL, Mr. Larry Wall be sometimes seen wandering around the premises here?

The best way to find out is to keep reading!

Also, do you have a designated person to welcome newcomers?

Many newcomers have received a welcome, but not necessarily by a designated person. PerlMonks isn't an organisation with defined roles.

...we could try to highlight its benefits that many people wouldn't know.

Yeah, feel free to do so! Different users see different benefits, and amongst the PerlMonks the language is being used for vastly different things. As for the new future, Perl 5.38 is around the corner, bringing (among other things) a new keyword class. I would expect its benefits to be discussed among PerlMonks in the near future.

Hi Haj, hmm I'm guessing ultimately Perl 5.38 and 5.0 both would exist for different purposes.

G'day Nayeem-monk,

"hmm I'm guessing ultimately Perl 5.38 and 5.0 both would exist for different purposes."

I think you may have misunderstood something here; or perhaps just made a false assumption. Perl version numbers have increased as new updates have been released: they're all versions of Perl; they do not have "different purposes".

Note the chronological progression of version numbers in perlhist.

The URL "https://metacpan.org/pod/perl" will show you the current stable version (5.36.0 at the time of writing). In the lefthand panel, the "Jump to version" dropdown list has links for versions going back to very early Perl5 versions.

Given a version like 5.x.y, development releases have an odd "x" number and stable releases have an even "x" number. This convention started around 5.6.0.

See also: "use VERSION"; "perldata: Version Strings"; "version (pragma)".

— Ken

Larry used to come here, but has not done so for some years. He used to post as TimToady. There is also The St. Larry Wall Shrine.

Regards,

John Davies

Hi John thanks for pointing it out :-)

Discipulus è il volontario per questi compiti nel campo del marketing.

Karlgoethebier grazie!