Good evening Monks, I thought I'd try to stimulate some discussion on advocating and passing Perl along to the next generation.

While Perl is not dead as some advocates of other languages like to point out, it sems to have lost ground in some areas. Web development is one example, when PHP became popular. Another is as a "scripting" interface for other applications. Apparently Python is now the language du jour for that purpose, as well a good number of standalone open source programs.

I get it that Perl is no longer the "cool" new language, that distinction was taken by Python, then Ruby and possibly Lua will be next. I see an evolution here, where in the public perception these languages go from shiny & new, to mainstream, to old and somewhat unknown or overlooked.

Today I had an interesting conversation with the technical programs coordinator for the public library system of a mid-sized U.S. city. Among other things, they hold classes on programming for people of all ages. There are visually oriented languages for teaching young children, and they teach Ruby, Python and Javascript to people from early teenagers through older adults. However, she seemed to be unfamiliar with Perl, I don't think she was more than vaguely aware of Perl's existence.

So, it occurs to me that this may be a good place to advocate Perl. Perhaps experienced Perl programmers could volunteer to teach the language at public libraries or similar venues, where to that audience Perl would be new again. This could be a win-win where you advocate and teach your favorite language, while giving back to your community and the Perl community as well.

In reply to Perl and the Future by hangon

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.