I get what you’re saying and I think the anonymonk’s paranoia above is silly. There is, however, a lot of baseless yet cohesive hatred for Perl and no one, really nearly no one, would choose Java if they were 100% free to decide and knew the alternatives and yet… Corporate agendas can and do frame the landscape, else WIN would not be ubiquitous for example.

I think what a lot of VCs are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for companies that hope to win by writing great software. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM. –Great Hackers

There is, however, a lot of baseless yet cohesive hatred for Perl

That's just ridiculous. There is mockery and sarcasm, but there is no lot of hatred. The loudest voices I've heard against Perl came from people who used it and weren't happy with it, so it is not baseless. The mainstream just ignores Perl: ignorance isn't hatred. The "hatred" saga is abused by those who feel stuck to Perl - to justify verbal retaliation.

Perl has less attention than it had ten or twenty years ago. It was extremely comfortable to start Perl back then, with all the infrastructure like CPAN nicely in place, and it appears that too many took that for granted. By now, many of those who built that infrastructure have either retired or moved elsewhere. The lesson is that it is up to the current Perl community to keep this infrastructure up and running, be it CPAN, the software running PerlMonks, or organizing conferences, or the community itself.

Blaming the hatred of others for the current situation is quite popular these days, yet I am convinced that it is a recipe for failure.

We live in very different worlds then. I am a vessel of truth here and this is experience online and coming out of Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond which happen to be somewhat important to the direction of language usage. You weren’t here for this thread, for example: Re: I want you to convince me to learn Perl.

The situation in Perl’s increasing marginalization has little to nothing to do with the hatred—I never, ever said it did—and everything to do with deployment issues, apps, binding to modern libs, Perl Ludditism, and general infighting. If you are suggesting, implicitly, against my point that Java is a natural, self-organized, pleasant language that won the market through its sheer delight… I wouldn’t know how to respond.

> There is mockery and sarcasm, but there is no lot of hatred

I've been so many times in situations where only mentioning Perl made me feel like a Buddhist monk in ISIS headquarter that I stopped counting.

There is some truth in your words, because the hate is nowadays often replaced by ridicule and even pity. That's even worse because Perl is not considered dead and not a competitor anymore.

Of course it's also the fault of a community which ignored changes in the ecosystem and wasn't able to address the needs of important multipliers.

But badmouthing was an important factor, because most of the criticized factors are equally true for much more successful competitors.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

"There" is nonetheless a need for easy answers.

And "Many" like mobbing others, to badmouth others brings a quick return of "investment".

That's (unfortunately) human.

Investing in specialized IT-know-how is a risky business, if the mainstream moves on to other shores.

And fear to lose is a strong impulse to repeat unfunded claims.

I did it myself in the past with PHP without ever really using it, not sure if I'm immune to do it again.

( And I experienced it countless times on other fields, like racists chauvinists pointing at Germany to prove their own "tolerance". (At least we never... ) Or illiterate people trying to educate Arabic academics. Or rude tourists openly complaining about Asian culture. )

There might be no "They" conspiracy, but nonetheless a mob spreading FUD and cheering whenever someone makes a derisive joke.

IMHO its fascinating to observe that the less Pythonistas understand their own language (iterators wtf???) the more they "hate" Perl.

Tribal psychology if you want.