Hello, monks

I know it`s been asked tons of times if Perl is this if Perl is that. A friend of mine was trying to make me believe that Perl is no longer popular, since the fuzz is around Java with android, Python and google, javascript and DOM API. I saw some of his refs, in which really the chart showed that Perl was at it`s top in 2000 year and now it is going down and down. So he asked me: "Why Perl?" and these are my reasons:

  1. Perl is fast ( which is the easiest thing to say
  2. Perl comes with a huge library 3rd party files - the CPAN
  3. Perl has many build in unix-like commands like chdir, link, unlink, chmod, etc.
  4. Textual files are processed like a child`s play
  5. Perl is easier to understand than Ruby or Python, even though it`s syntax is a bit different

Well, my arguments were the things I found useful and the things I like in Perl, not that there might be the same in other langyages, I know not of. He replied with:

  1. Perl is hardly OOP, not an easy like Java, Py/Rb or PHP

  2. Python is widely used nowadays from Google, PHP is the main language for the WEB, and Javascirpt is the language of the browser. JAVA is a general purpose language, strictly typed with x-compatibility. LUA and javascript are better glue languages.
  3. Regex is not bind to Perl, every language has a regex functionality. A regex excellence is not a good argument.

So, I step aside, since arguing for languages instead for approach is ridiculous. There is a programming approach, not a programming language. You chooshe the best for you. But, I am asking the expert monks here, the ones with knowledge in many languages to give me some arguments - why Perl. Not the trivial explanations that Amazon uses it, and it`s been around 30 years... It`s a technical reference, the way it surpass other languages. Why it beats python, what Perl has that others don`t and why Perl is worthy to learn, beside a SH successor.

In reply to Argument for Perl ( again and again ) by heatblazer

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