in reply to Perceptions of Perl - views from the edge
Without knowing Perl, I would look for some toolbox of parts that I could put together myself. Writing anything from scratch is fascinating but these days is usually an insane waste of time.
Without knowing about CPAN, I would worry about what add-ons were available, what quality they would be, and what kind of support might be available for them.
Without knowing about the Perl community, I would try to gauge whether the company or organization providing the toolbox looked and sounded like it could provide technical backup if necessary
Perl is definitely a quirky language, but it's got a really neat personality. There's a great deal of power behind the language, and that's only part of the story.
Software is a living document that instructs a computer system how to behave. As such, it needs to be well documented, well tested and well supported, and Perl succeeds in all of those areas.
There are many excellent books out about various aspects of Perl; testing is very well supported, both at a unit level and at an application level; and the Perl community is healthy and thriving.
On a personal note, I got a little too complacent in the mid 90's, thinking that now that I'd pretty much figured out C, I didn't need to learn anything new. It was a hell of a shock to discover that C wasn't much in demand any more, and that now Java and C++ were what people wanted.
I read through the Java books and felt overwhelmed by all of the OO babble. C++ made about as much sense, and all of this focus on Object Orientation seemed ridiculous.
Fortunately for me, a bit of tinkering with this new language Perl suggested it might be lots of fun, and luckily for me I fell into a great contract writing Perl that allowed me to learn as I went along.
Perl works for me because it's a great language, because CPAN provides piles and piles of really useful software, and because the community is always there to answer your questions and back you up. I'm really grateful Perl's around.
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