I'm curious to know if Perl Monks believe that Perl is still worth learning as a primary programming language. I've used it in the past for some bioinformatics programming and really like the language. I'm interested in a change of career and wonder if it is worth the time investment really learning Perl in depth with the aim of becoming a Perl developer some time in the future. I know that there are a lot of 'trendier' programming languages out there like Python, PHP and Ruby. My logic behind learning Perl is that there are fewer people learning it compared to other languages. I assume that the market is awash with programmers using these other languages and that there might be a niche for perl programmer. Does anyone here work as a professional Perl programmer, either as an employee or a freelancer? Is there a future in Perl programming, or is a lot of the work migrating Perl to another platform? Are any start ups still using Perl frameworks like Catalyst?

In reply to Is it still worth learning Perl as a first language? by tm2383

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