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Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

"Perl development is picking up and enthusiasm for Perl 5 is as strong as ever."

I will take your word for it, but I do have to say (speaking as someone with a lot of grey in his hair) that I haven't seen a young developer choose to work primarily in perl (over ruby or Python or Java or C#) in ages. Most new projects/startups don't seem to choose perl as their primary language.

I readily concede that this is probably an artifact of my limited experience with perl. Just noting what I see, not looking for a flame war.

How many of YC companies use perl do you think?

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You have a good point that Perl doesn't have great adoption with young'uns. I think we'd see more Perl usage if Ruby didn't exist; Ruby borrowed some of Perl's most attractive features and is rightly popular for it.

By the numbers, though, I still agree with the quoted statement. Perl development is picking up compared to the past few years, and enthusiasm for Perl 5 is the strongest it's been (at least since 5.0).

Perhaps it's not as popular because it doesn't have One True Web Framework, which is what the young'uns use these days, right? I know Catalyst and Mason are both very nice frameworks, but they don't come rolled with a base Perl installation.

Rails is the main driver behind Ruby's success, true. And it really is a nice framework. However, Rails doesn't come rolled with a standard Ruby installation either, and 'gem install rails' is no easier or harder than 'cpan -i Catalyst::Devel'.

Interestingly, I notice many of the new Rails 3.0 features -- most notably composable set algebra and increased modularity -- are features which drew me to Catalyst+DBIx::Class. I haven't worked with Rails 3 in detail yet, but I have some Rails work coming up in the next few months and I am excited to compare and contrast.

'gem install rails' is no easier or harder than 'cpan -i Catalyst::Devel'

...Perhaps from your perspective.

You might just not be in the right echo chamber. In the last few years I've been in several startups where perl is the primary development language. Most of the people we hired were in their mid twenties to mid thirties, which seems about what you'd expect for startups. HN seems to be a hangout for lots of python (and lisp, and ruby) people, but less so for perl and php people. Obviously I do hang out in the right echo chambers, which is probably why my experience differs.

As a counter-example, the previous startup I worked at was a medium-sized perl shop in SV. They had an incredibly hard time recruiting high-quality engineers. Finding good coders who were proficient in perl was a rarity and it seemed as though all of the various perl shops were fighting over these people when they hit the market; finding interns and recent college grads who either knew perl or were willing to spend the time to learn it was almost impossible. From what I saw the pool of perl talent was just not as broad as people claim.

I haven't ever had problems hiring good perl people for the startups I've founded. But that may just be the area (Vancouver has a bunch of really good perl people). Also I try to only do cool things and treat people well. ;-)

I see your point about talent though. There are quite a few really good perl programmers, and a lot of "I once wrote a script in that" types, but not many in the middle. In some ways this is a strength - if you're programming in perl these days, odds are you've stuck with it because you actually like the language, so you're probably pretty good at it. On the other hand, it's not taught in school, so unless folks learn it on their own or on the job, there might be a real lack of new talent coming up the ranks.

As a programmer for hire, I can't complain about the wages. As an entrepreneur, I know where to find the good people, so it's not really a problem for me.

(I would also point out that any good programmer or intern/recent college grad who wishes to become a good programmer should always be willing to learn a new language on the company's tab. If they aren't, that probably says more about them than the language).

The company was doing some pretty cool stuff and the team/pay/benefits were on the high-end for the valley, so that was not really a problem, it was mostly a lot of competition for a small pool of people worth having.

any good programmer or intern/recent college grad who wishes to become a good programmer should always be willing to learn a new language on the company's tab. If they aren't, that probably says more about them than the language

Would you learn COBOL on the company's tab? I wouldn't waste my time. Right or wrong, the impression that most people under 30 have of perl is that it is crufty write-once-read-never-again code used back when cgi scripts ruled the world; a dead-end skill that won't improve their long-term prospects.

If someone has interesting work, and wants to pay me to learn COBOL, then absolutely I will. Actually, I have another startup in the works that probably will require learning COBOL at some point anyway...

Older people use it is because they don't want to change or learn something new. Especially in a company already entrenched in Perl development, their is little benefit to switching to a better language compared to the cost of forcing people to learn a whole new technology stack when they are more than content with Perl. However, new companies are much more free to build on whatever technology stack is most appropriate.

I've also noticed over time that lots of non-CS majors can and do program in scripting languages because they are relatively easy to pick up and get things done with. These people are usually more aligned with an IT career in that scripting constitutes only a fraction of their job. If they happen to learn Perl and PHP first, then that is what they stick with.

These people may like to program, but it is not the favorite part of their job and they have other work activities they enjoy more. More importantly, they know little to nothing about software design principles and are not interested in improving their software development skills. They would rather spend their time learning about something else that interests them more. Therefore, they don't even know how to appreciate the advantages more modern scripting languages offer. To these people, languages like Perl are more than sufficient to get their job done, and they are probably right.

However, as people who know better, I believe we should be encouraging better languages in a friendly way whenever possible. When my IT friends ask me about any questions related to programming, I usually try to point them to Python or Ruby for a solution. If they are asking questions they are probably interested in learning something new!

edit: changed wording based on reply from gamache.

I disagree with your implication that Perl is suitable for newbs but should be discarded for "better languages" by people who are interested in learning.

In fact I would invert your statement: I think Perl is not a good choice for people without good programming habits, but for those who know how to use it, it offers more power of expression than most of its peers.

(Also, datum: count me in as an "older person" preferring Perl for most tasks despite knowing Ruby, Python, JS and half a dozen other languages.)

I never meant to imply that Perl is suitable for newbs, but rather most scripting languages are. I would much rather newbs learn another language, in fact. I changed my wording in my original post to reflect that.

Also, for my background, I learned Perl as my first scripting language and after writing a ~1k line code project in it, decided that for anything over 200 lines I would rather use Java. Later when I learned Python I was vindicated in that almost everything I instinctively disliked about Perl was absent in Python. Since then I have learned many other languages as well, and I also know Perl the language better than most of my co-workers

I actually tend to find the opposite: I know lots of CS majors who love perl and C, and lots of web-design-focused non-cs-majors who love ruby, python, and php. Both groups are approx the same age (late-20s/early-30s).

I am a young developer working primarily in Perl.

Reasons? Friendly, knowledgable community. CPAN and Catalyst.

Admittedly I don't know any other [under]graduates using Perl (outside of bio/geology).

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