Besides Perl5, I consider C and C++ as the only other languages which seem eternal, and therefore worth learning.

It has been said that Perl is just Lisp with syntactic sugar, which surely has some points, at the language level. At the implementation level, I would say that perl is just a baroque FORTH engine (implemented in C, which is funny). And therefore, I'd include both Lisp and FORTH (which is still alive and kicking) in the group of -ahem- eternal languages.

Well, thinking again... maybe the triade is just C, Lisp and FORTH, perl being a successful attempt to bind all three into one funny language...

I'm really liking learning C. It is pretty natural after spending so many years with Perl (well, at least the syntax, and pointers are easier to digest). Of course, hacking out code to coincide with integrated circuits kind of forced me down the path, but if you know Perl, *and* you know C, I think any other language is easily picked up. Especially if combined with a bit of a dangerous level of C++.

You're right about people moving on though. I see that at my work. Just before I started, they had a huge discussion about which language would be the core interface to the C++ backend. I have read all of the meeting discussions about this topic. They chose Python, primarily because it seemed to have a lot of ready developers available.

A few years later, I've seen some pretty shit code being drummed out, and imho, it isn't a solution architects job to find bugs in product while doing an implementation, but guess what I do a few times per deployment?

So when these college kids got out of school all ready to do Python dev, they had no real experience at all, especially about core aspects (ahem... unit testing!). Now, whatever language comes next will cause these languages to fall behind, and it's the same predicament.

What do you do? I'm sticking with Perl until the cold, bitter end if it ever comes to that. The Perl ecosystem is much more friendly and enjoyable than any other. I also like that we're well over the honeymoon phase, and when you deal with someone elses Perl issue, it's usually a good problem. Not a thousand questions about homework or something lacking any form of substance.

I can get Perl to do nearly anything I can do in any other language, and if I can't sort it, someone else can.

To me, there is no replacement for Perl. This is why I have decided to become so heavily invested in it.

One day, I'm confident, Perl will be my day job.

One former fan of Python, I work with, used to sing the praise of Python. Then a year after I first met him, he was slamming Python as "pseudo code with a fragile, indentation based syntax".

While he still prefers PHP over Perl, he long ago stopped complaining that our department's go to "Swiss Army Knife" for creating custom tools is Perl. Our build system is the duet of Perl and make. We convert field test and simulation data using Perl. Our release packaging system runs on Perl. Heck, even the Test Engineering department uses Perl to make their test stands work together (and some of the test stands do run on Perl).

You finally get rid of that cosmic ray?

L*

Hey Zentara. Nice to see you.