I don't think that it would serve any good purpose to try to manipulate or guide "mindshare" or public opinion or whatever. Perl stands or falls on its own merits, regardless of what PHP is doing. And of course, PHP *is* a niche language, having little use outside of Web applications.

Perl just won't fit into the PHP niche. Perl is a general-purpose language that can do so much, it defies a simple categorization. It's a Web-development language; but not *only* that. It's a glue language; but so much more than that. It does so much that it would be misleading to try to portray it as "just" anything (except maybe, "just about anything you can think of".

I think your comment about newcomers being overwhelmed is a little bit overstated (though it has some truth to it). True - a newcomer can easily be overwhelmed by all of Perl's features, functions, modules, and uses. But a newcomer can start writing useful, working programs within a very short time, using only a small number of these features. The good news is that you don't *have* to know the whole language - or even a big part of it - to get something done. As you continue to learn, you become more adept at writing better, more powerful programs, but you can jump right in and start doing things right away.

Slashdot discusses a wide variety of IT issues and languages, of which Perl is only one facet. Naturally it won't focus on Perl to the extent that we do here; and when it comes to Web development, it may not even give Perl the attention it deserves. Still, I'd rather have that, than people assuming Perl is nothing more than a _______ language, fill in the blank with just about anything. Already there is misleading information that Perl is "only" a scripting language or a glue language. Why cram it into a "Web-application" language, too?

In reply to Re: Perl mindshare in web development by spiritway
in thread Perl mindshare in web development by gunzip

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