It seems to me there are a number of misconceptions in your thesis and a couple of assertions that are just plain wrong. First off two items that are simply incorrect:

  1. Actually there are good IDEs for Perl - Eclipse for one, Komodo from ActiveState for another.
  2. GUI does not imply any requirement for multi-threading support.

The overriding misconception however is that the fate of a programming language is tied to growing to encompass the complete gamut of programming application areas. That is simply not the case. Perl does not need to evolve into something that is strong in GUI and multi-threading application areas to remain a useful and successful language. It helps that Perl provides some support in those areas because very often mixing in a little GUI code or multi-threading avoids the need to reach for a different tool. However Perl's strong suite is as a text processing tool and it is still the case that text processing tools that involve very little GUI or multi-threading code are required and will continue to be required for a long time yet.

Languages like COBOL fall by the wayside because new languages and techniques do what they did better. In the areas where Perl is strong there is very little to beat it. And in many of the areas where Perl is strong it continues to grow stronger. Consider the new facilities that are being added to the Perl 5.10 regex engine for example. Consider also that Perl has been, and continues to be, highly successful in building a library of code (CPAN) to augment the facilities provided by the language. Both Perl and its support continue to grow - rumors of Perl's demise are both premature and exaggerated.

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: Slow evolution of Perl = Perl is a closed Word by GrandFather
in thread Slow evolution of Perl = Perl is a closed Word by Anonymous Monk

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