Mike Miller wrote: > On Thu, 2 Oct 2008, Steve Cayford wrote: > >> Dan Rue wrote: >> >>> I wouldn't bother with perl unless there's a legacy codebase you are >>> interested in. They haven't released a new major version in some 10 >>> years, and I don't think very many people choose it for *new* projects. >>> It does still have a foothold in the sys admin's tool belt and is >>> ubiquitous in server environments, but as a language it's frequently >>> discounted now days for anything beyond glorified shell scripts. Still >>> worth knowing at least superficially because you will run into it. >>> >> Perl 5.10 just came out last December and both Perl 5 and Perl 6 are >> under continuing development. Perl's heavily used in a lot of large >> organizations and CPAN is huge and still growing. > > But he said "major version," and I doubt 5.10 counts as major. He isn't > the only person telling me this. The Perl developers call it a major version, I'd say that counts. The difference between Perl 5 and Perl 6 is more than a version change which is why 6 has taken so long. > >> I'm sure Ruby and Python are also very good. I don't have enough >> experience to comment on them though. > > That is a typical kind of reaction ... Hm. My point was not to compare them. My point was that Perl is a great language and should not be dismissed as only good for "glorified shell scripts". I don't know if that's a "typical" reaction, but it's an appropriate one. -Steve