The XP Nodelet informs me that I've been a member of the Monastery 10 years as of today, but it feels quite melancholy in the wake of the most recent Tiobe Index. Perl was ranked as the 9th most popular language in January 2013, but has fallen to 13th one year later.

A look at their long term history reveals that perl has fallen from an average ranking of 4 when I first entered the Monastery, to an average of tenth now, and my own experience has confirmed this: most of the work I do in perl these days is prototyping for fuller development in other languages.

What saddens me most is that I have learned a lot about software development from perl as a language, and as a community, and now it's beginning to feel that this world has increasingly little relevance for those who live outside of it.

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