This is a meditation that motivates me each time I think of it. It is like a prayer.

Perl is God's Swiss Army Knife of the Internet. You can do pretty much everything you want that concerns the Internet with Perl. I should rather ask: "What can't be done that concerns the Internet with Perl?"

I am wondering if Perl is the first language that has almost no limitation in this field. Of course, we should not forget that there are other languages, but they could not replace the power of Perl (I'm thinking for example about Rebol, which is powerful for specific purposes, but which is such a tiny subset of Perl; and about PHP also, another language designed for a specific purpose; and about Java also - which has a really strong set of libraries, including networking libraries, but that will never replace Perl - when I use Java, it is mostly because of its user interface libraries.) I don't want to forget mentionning the birth of this bastard language called C#, developped by Big Brother, which is nothing else than MicrosoftJava - a scary thing, but this would rather be another post in the discussion section, where the evil forces can be cited so that our novices could possibly avoid them... for sure, C# won't replace Perl.

Some people talk sometimes about the death of Perl. Well, for us, it is like the death of our God, the Eternal Father Who we love so much and Who gives us a goal everyday and rewards our monastic community work. Let us write prayers in the Poetry section, for those people so that they discover, someday, the Truth: Perl, is THE Web language. If you don't feel like you have enough imagination, then read the poetry of others to lift up your mind.

Amen. .

In reply to Perl, God's Swiss Army Knife of the Web by gaggio

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