It seems Perl is popular among people that use it. This seems obvious, but well, Perl gets stuff done quickly and there is a certain art to Perl that makes it more fun than coding in other languages.

There seems to be a recent trend to peddle Python instead of Perl in certain communities (Slashdot), but Python still lacks the analog of CPAN and can't do quite as much (yet).

I find in general the folks that ask for "readability" simply haven't tried to grok Perl, and are somehow afraid of it. I think the rigid standards enforced by Java and Python are more of chains, the job of discipline is in the programmer. It would be quite a shame if the "hand holding" languages won out. Python's motto of "There should only be one (clear) way to do it", for instance. That's robotic. If everyone adopted this, then we would truly be just grunt I.T. workers. The science in computer science would be lost. Sadly, most corporate programmers were somehow brainwashed into these thoughts, and I choke every time I hear the same tired "Perl is executable line noise" crap. They simply don't know how to write good code, and they need a language that restrains them!

Embrace the art.

In reply to Re: Perl Popularity by flyingmoose
in thread Perl Popularity by kal

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