Re:The Second Age of Perl
by sliverstorm on Wednesday May 26, 2010 @05:46PM
(#1381830)
So long as Perl is useful, I will continue to use it. It is still useful, and so I continue to use it.
Perhaps for hacking up a fancy program it is a poor choice, but that's not what I use it for. For me, Perl is a step above bash when it comes to scripting. You can throw other languages at me all you like, but in my experience it manages the task perfectly well, and is second only to bash itself in terms of spread on Linux machines. Python is the only possible alternative, and I have not yet seen a need to switch nor been convinced Python is nearly as universal (plus the Python runtime itself tends to give me more trouble)
Perhaps for hacking up a fancy program it is a poor choice, but that's not what I use it for. For me, Perl is a step above bash when it comes to scripting. You can throw other languages at me all you like, but in my experience it manages the task perfectly well, and is second only to bash itself in terms of spread on Linux machines. Python is the only possible alternative, and I have not yet seen a need to switch nor been convinced Python is nearly as universal (plus the Python runtime itself tends to give me more trouble)