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Perhaps I'm just in a pessimistic mood, but what makes you think we Perl use is growing, and not shrinking? Esp as a percentage, I think it's shrinking. People are moving away from perl solutions into PHP and Java, and even, alas and alack, VB.

I suspect the major problem is that people confuse Perl, the language, with all the things that have been associated with Perl over it's long history. (Yes, long, compared to PHP and Java.) Specificly, people get Perl and CGI confused (perl is slow compared to PHP!) and Perl5 and Perl4 confused (Perl isn't suited for large projects).

Even worse, there's the impression (correct and self-perpetuating) for busniesspeople that any random you pick up will know Java, PHP, and VB. For those just learning, there's the impression that busniesspeople want to hire people that know Java, PHP, and VB, and don't care about Perl.

What I want to know is if we know how to change these vicious cycles, or if I should just bite the bullet, and start branching out more into languages with more resume-power.

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In reply to Re: Abstract: rate of popular growth for Perl by theorbtwo
in thread Abstract: rate of popular growth for Perl by Tommy

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