At the multi-national corporation in which I work, we use Perl for many tools. When I first started here as an intern, one of my first jobs was hacking one of these tools to add a new feature. Coming from an academic Java background, I was horrified when I first looked at Perl.
After a bit of hacking, I started to gain some experience and then finally caved in to the fact that I might have to, as a professional programmer, learn languages other than Java and C. So for months I debated on whether or not I would take the practical route and learn Perl for my job or follow the current trends and learn Python. There were many pros and cons of each one, but my decision came down to one strong point. What more am I getting when I go from Java to Python? The answer for me was, not much. Python just seemed to be too much like Java. So I thought, "if I know how to use Java, and I learn a highly dynamic language like Perl, then Python should be pretty easy if ever I needed to learn it". So I learned Perl as a challenge and for my job. Having chose Perl over Python, I do have high hopes for the future of Perl6. There does seem to be a bit of stagnation, but the language and the implementation seem heading towards a great evolution. And besides, Perl just helps me get the job done.
