The March 2003 issue of Talent Economy magazine (which is what Contract Professional morphed into) has an article titled "Are You Working With Endangered Languages?", which warns of the threat of using
"... a non-standard programming language because one of the main engineers like it without considering its supportability in the future."
The article has a nifty sidebar chart titled "Programming Community Index for February 2003", based on a Google-based ranking of languages based on job openings, books, and training courses. The chart shows Perl at position #4 (out of 20 shown), and moving up. (The chart also shows C# at #10, and moving up quickly.) The strong implication is that Perl is a mainstream choice, not an endangered language. (No news to us, but perhaps news to some managers.)

Validity of surveys like this aside, this type of article tends to be seen by non- or semi-technical people in influential positions who will probably pay more attention to the eye-catching chart than to the article. If you need to influence an influencer, show them the chart.

In reply to "Are You Working With Endangered Languages?" by dws

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