I would say they are wrong as well. I am using Perl for more than 8 years now, and so far it has been driving my career. The best thing about Perl is that I've been able to design things that would usually require more than one person. The other thing is that in fact the tools are not the most important thing, but the final result. Anyway. I've designed a huge company Intranet software and also point of sale and business management system entirely in Perl, and only my director knew that I am using Perl. For the clients the important thing was the end result, they don't even knew what Perl means. I personally like Perl because it helped me in the worst times when I could do things quick, with the help of sites like this, as well as CPAN and all other communities and companies that has support for Perl. Apart of talking IT and programming the best thing is to what you like to do - and if it is Perl - then you don't need to think for anything else. I can assure you that Perl has a great and bright future, and there will be more and more serious applications developed in Perl, especially when bigger amount of companies is using web driven applications. Have a look at the success stories for mod_perl and Perl itself on their sites and you will see that.