We're living in different world now, procedural style rules, people program in PHP and they say it's 'easy' (because you don't have to think, you know) ....

First I've heard of prorammers reverting to procedural style. PHP5 is going The Way of All Java, leaving its procedural brethren in the dust in a desperate attempt to be accepted in corporate circles. A long way from Ramsus Lerdorf's "Personal Home Page" kit indeed.

I don't know about not having to think with PHP but it is certainly less idiomatic than Perl. It also suffers from a conflict of interest and identity. Witness Zend's endless commercial add-ons and the ongoing tug-of-war with MySQL. It just seems to be so concerned with the "industry".

As a web developer who has had to use PHP for client projects from time-to-time I always want to get back to Perl at the end. If anyone is interested in contributing I'm looking to devise a list of CPAN modules to provide Perl developers with the same features as is available in PHP's main web development functions.