PHP has become the de-facto scripting language on the internet, putting CGI into fast retreat

I wouldn't worry too much about someone who doesn't know that PHP uses the CGI as well. PHP wouldn't be much use without the CGI!

We just patched 5,000 installations of PHP BB. The hole was that you could declare a global variable within the query string (oo, that's CGI ;-) that would include a remote file. Any web language that easily lets you include a remote file is asking for trouble!

Don't get down Brad! We're a Perl team of 7 and growing. Feel free to drop a resumé over if you ever feel like moving down and left a bit ;-)

Added bonus is that our office is about 200yds from tilly's, and there are a bunch of other Perl hackers close by - though, being Mr Dad, I've managed to miss the last two LA PM meetings, so I don't know who they all are :)

When I get stressed out that crap tech is doing things that Perl should be, I just remember this quote from Paul Graham:

During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of job descriptions. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork every month or so. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had a live online demo, was look at their job listings. After a couple years of this I could tell which companies to worry about and which not to. The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting to sound like a company where the technical side, at least, is run by real hackers. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried. - source

...and kick myself that I still haven't got my head around Lisp ;-)

I think the thing with Perl is that there's no marketing plan, because there's no major, expensive technology to sell with it. So, just because you don't hear a 'buzz' around Perl, it doesn't mean that it's dying (unless Netcraft confirms it :)

Next time the paranoia comes, just remember that Ticketmaster not only built most of Template::Toolkit, they also eat their own dog food, and that many other companies are quietly using Perl to do good and great things (heck, even we have a few people using out host management system :)

Happy thanksgiving^*

cLive ;-)

^*I'm surprised thanksgiving isn't celebrated in the UK - "Puritans? Want to leave? No, not a problem. Here, take my boat" - well, that's how I think it went :)