In the workplace, Perl solved an annoying problem for us, twenty years ago. Back then, we needed to support Windows (different versions) plus many different Unix flavours (e.g. Solaris, AIX, SCO, SGI, Digital Unix, ...) and Perl proved to be much more portable, efficient, scalable and enjoyable for glue code than a motley mix of Bourne/Korn shell and .BAT. As for why, see Unix shell versus Perl.

Being forced to learn Perl for work, I found that I really enjoyed the recreational fun culture of Perl obfu and golf and hung out on the now dormant fwp (fun with perl) mailing list back then ... and (later) Perl Monks. I spent many happy hours tinkering with Saturn and playing Perl golf. I just really enjoyed (and still do) the sense of fun and community around Perl.

Soon after I'd mastered Perl, it became clear to me that Perl, Ruby and Python were essentially equivalent and we could have equally solved our shell woes by using Python or Ruby instead of Perl ... though by then, it didn't make sense to spend the dollars on rewriting our many working Perl scripts in Python or Ruby.

Over the years, I've been saddened by Perl's gradual decline in popularity -- tiobe, for example, shows that Python now dominates both Perl and Ruby in terms of popularity (update: despite breaking backward compatibility). In case you're interested, I enjoy both Ruby and Python almost as much as Perl (and much more than Unix shell or Javascript). I was also saddened by what happened to Perl 6 in its formative years.

Update:

Though we've still got a lot of working Perl scripts, most of the younger guys prefer to use Python or Javascript/Node.js/Deno nowadays ... which I totally understand (2023 update: ... they're also eager to try Infrastructure as code tools, such as Puppet and Ansible ... and new DevOps tools, such as Jenkins and Kubernetes and Apache Ant, often requiring JVM languages such as Groovy ... and Microservices ... and trendy new statically typed languages, such as Rust, and Golang, and V, and ... :)

After seeing talexb's reply: yes, I too attended Perl mongers meetings in the early years and had the good fortune to meet Larry and Audrey Tang, aka audreyt, who stayed in my Sydney house for a few days (leaving behind one of her earrings :), her phenomenal talent on display for all to marvel at (wow, I see she is now a famous Taiwanese politician!). Also met Bjarne Stroustrup at a C++ conference. Both Larry and Bjarne were gentlemen and gentle men; they both impressed me enormously with their humbleness, honesty and integrity. Unlike talexb, I'm not a huge fan of C and definitely not PHP. Though I enjoyed using Simula and FORTRAN (for Defence Department battlefield simulations) in the 1970s, and 4GLs and Pascal on CTOS and COBOL on IBM Mainframes in the 1980s, C++ was the first language I fell in love with and has been my primary work programming language since 1988 -- I've been impressed at the way Bjarne has lovingly shepherded its development and modernisation, year after year, decade after decade.

References Added Later

• How has Perl affected you? by stevieb (2017)
• Why did you become a Perl expert (or programmer)? by QM (2018)
• Who's still around? by stevieb (2024)

Perl's a language, but it's also a community that supports that language, as evidenced by the Perlmongers groups (I lead the group in Toronto, Canada), The Perl Foundation (I'm taking care of the Sponsorship committee these days) and the annual conference (TPCiC, happening again this June).

For me, it was originally a more convenient tool than writing one-off C programs to mung a file, and it ran on a variety of platforms which was really handy. Lucky chance got me in the door of a startup that needed someone to write CGI scripts in Perl, so I started doing that over twenty years ago. The language continues to entertain and employ me, and it also provides a terrific technical community.

Now, over twenty years since picking this language up, I've looked at PHP, Python and Ruby -- they're nice languages, but I'm quite comfy with Perl. Tiobe says Perl's declining in popularity -- well, all I know is that I got cold-called a couple of times via LinkedIn for Perl jobs over the last five years, and they were thrilled that I was available, because "It's hard to find good Perl developers." So maybe it's not a popular language for new projects, but there's lots of legacy code out there that needs attention, as well as some new projects. So maybe Perl is the new COBOL?

Finally, I'm not going to bash other languages -- I wrote an SSO plugin in PHP for Roundcube a few jobs back, and while it wasn't my favourite language, it was perfectly fine. I used the same style of writing code that I use for Perl. It worked fine, I got it done on time and everyone was happy with the result. I also adore C -- it's a blast writing in it again, and it's blisteringly fast, but my language now is Perl. It's plenty fast, very flexible, and has all of these amazing modules.

Perl's a language – useful of course also for "one-liner" utilities – but to me its greatest strength is CPAN. Of all the many programming tools that I have worked with both recently and in the past, none of them have offered anything comparable to it. "The Perl programming language" is positively tiny, but the total ecosystem goes on forever and ever.

Just a gentle reminder that in the root node the OP made a polite (and unusual) request to "refrain from replying to anyone else (except OP)" and to "post only once, feel free to edit/update your node as much as you want". I'm aware that in replying here I am not abiding by that request :) ... but the original AM started it by (unnecessarily) replying to talexb instead of the OP. Now, who do we know who has a long history of replying to the wrong post? :) Update: again.

"The Perl programming language" is positively tiny ..

Huh. My copy of Programming Perl, Fourth Edition (Christiansen, foy & Wall, O'Reilly Media, Inc., February 2012) tops out at 1,130 pages and weighs 1.7 kilos. If that's what you consider a 'tiny' language, your scale may need .. re-calibration. ;)

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

"The Perl programming language" is positively tiny

Ehhh... Wrong. Again. smh

as I said many times, for me Perl is the only sane interaction with the machine in the sense that using perl I'm not in a passive state, being modified by the machine, but modifying it using my will and creativity.

Once someone said that technology is always an extension or an amputation of something the human being already own.

Perl is my extension in the computer parallel world and in what is called IT.

I dont like to be prone and passive and so, something is interesting if I can hack it with perl, or if there is the possibility to do so. All the remaining is an amputation.

Also perl programming is my mental excercise, my hobby, my sudoku, my sparetime activity (when the weather does not permit to dive into the sea ;). No tv nor tv series here: only perl and books and motorcycles maintenance.

I work in IT and in the past I've used perl to automate many boring tasks, mainly on windows because this appeared to be my field and not for my choice. Now $work evolved a lot and no more room is there for the adamantine power Perl brings in everyday IT activities. Maybe I'll get my revenge one day :)

In my opinion relegating Perl to a unix utility is like saying that a Kawasaki motor is a piece of metal alloy. Automation, data manipulation, GUI writing tool, image manipulation, network activities, consuming and serving web application, database activities, multithreading programming.. IT fields where perl is the wrong tool are very few and they are not interesting to me.

My life with perl evolved mainly with the help of the perlmonks community, so I can add this: Perl also let me to comunicate with people with interests similar to mines and this never happened in real life in regard of perl and programming.

Similar meditation already appeared and if you are really interested to my own perspective I invite you to read my opinions in Re: How has Perl affected you? and Re: Why did you become a Perl expert (or programmer)? as well the whole threads, very similar to the present one.

In the end, while I can adhere to your politely requested ground rules they are at least strange: perlmonks has it own minimalistic rules and inside that frame we are all free to express ourself in the way we like.

L*