Respected Monks,

I have been using Perl for many weeks now and thoroughly enjoy the process of learning it and implementing it in my environment. Perlmonks by far has been the main reason why I could pick up Perl so fast. Monks here have been very helpful. I have always got clear and honest answers and hence thought I should bring up a recent incident. Please understand that the only reason to write this is I really truly seek some clarification. I like using Perl and neither have the inclination nor the required deep technical knowledge to differentiate the technical nuances, advantages, disadvantages of any language, especially something as mature and vast as Perl. So kindly note that I do not intend to sound like I am belittling/deriding Perl.

I happened to discuss the scripts and my plans of automating many more reports and error / failure alerts with some technical managers and developers here and they appreciated it, but some of them seemed amused that I am using Perl. For some reason, they directly/indirectly kept bringing up Python and Ruby stating that now a days it makes more sense to learn these langauges. I tried Python quite a while ago, even before the above discussion but could not really get a hang of it. The whitespace and the scope issues kept biting me. I was infact told that most organizations are in the process of "migrating Perl scripts to Python". Few of them even stated, "If there's just one scripting language you wanna learn and get good at, use and stick to Python because everyone is using it and all the new stuff is done in Python. It's much more modern, more powerful and flexible than Perl, and definitely more legible and there are more Python jobs than Perl jobs so that should tell you which language is more in demand". Another guy stated that Python/Ruby are truly Object Oriented languages and it makes more sense to learn them.

I've contacted these guys before for certain issues and they were always helpful and I am amazed no end why they think this way. Some of them are good well meaning friends as well.

I therefore request the monks here to please shine some light on this issue.

How and why would organizations move away from Perl? Is it because Python is easier to learn? From whatever I have seen of Perl in past few weeks, its one fine language and especially for scripting and text manipulation, I don't think there is any other language that can come even close to it. So why is this step brotherly treatment meted out to it? What would organizations gain by moving away from Perl? Just that fact that there are more Python guys out there than Perl guys?

In my extremely limited understanding, a scripting language or the scripting facet of a language is a way to get a job done, to get a goal accomplished, or get a desired automation done. Why would someone really bother which sort of language is being used? It's not like I am writing a kernel or some big software. I just write scripts that automate things, that send the outputs, reports etc. They why so much focus on which language it should be done in?

The question that's stuck in my mind though, is, why are people moving "away" from Perl? It's not like its a Technology Refresh where you have to move your servers/storage/databases/applications from "End of Life" Hardware/software to something new. Is this a common phenomenon?

I once again humbly state that I do not intend to deride Perl. But at this point I am really really confused.