[Catalyst] Last Chance / Last Day: Web development platform contestand Perl / Catalyst

[Sebastian Riedel]

Brandon Black wrote:
> On 11/30/06, Alvar Freude <alvar at a-blast.org> wrote:
>> Having more teams should be good for several reasons: we can show 
>> that Perl
>> isn't dead (at the moment it looks half-dead), and there are more 
>> options
>> to choose from.
>>
>
> IMHO, Perl does *not* look half dead.

If a lot of people outside the Perl community say it looks half dead, 
then it does to them.
Ignoring and/or denying doesn't make it better, you have to accept the 
feedback and react to it.

> The rate of CPAN modules uploaded per year continues to rise, anyone
> could name a litany of high and low profile sites that still run perl,
> and the perl job market is great.  Active cutting-edge development
> continues in both p5 and of course the various p6-related efforts.
> Perl has never been a slick, well-marketed language, but it is still
> the duct-tape of the Internet.

But the problem is nobody outside the Perl community notices it.

And p5 development is not as active as you might think,
just take a look at the comments under 
http://use.perl.org/~sri/journal/31519.

The quote "Perl5 is not dead, it's just very, very stable" sums it up 
quite well.

> In spite of Perl's complete lack of kissing up to the "Enterprise"
> world, it's still an A-rated language on the TIOBE index:
> http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index

But it's losing a lot of ground to Python and Ruby recently. 
(http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/04/state_of_the_computer_book_mar_3.html)

--
sebastian