Category — Catalyst

One of the fine gentlemen I work with recently blogged about how he started out with Perl and it got me thinking about why Perl currently seems to be failing to drive the interest it so rightfully deserves.

Perhaps by thinking about how developers select a language we are more likely to understand why Perl doesn’t get the numbers. I personally can’t even remember how I started out on Perl, it was that long ago. I suspect it was because PHP wasn’t even around, and it was the most obvious choice for a dynamic site, or more likely page at the time.

So what are we doing to attract new developers to the wondrous Perl? CPAN offers a great resource for developers who already work with Perl, but what is there for developers new to Perl? Or more importantly what is there to actually entice them to Perl. Every virtual corner you turn someone is mentioning PHP or Ruby on Rails, but Perl seems to be less “down with the kids”.

Let me be the first to admit, I certainly don’t have the answers, but perhaps by looking at how we got the Perl bug, we can come up with some ideas how to hook in more users.

Recently on the Catalyst mailing list was a thread about the press release detailing the latest 5.8 version and discussions turned to the “outlandish claims” that PHP and Ruby evangelists make. But I find my self wondering do we do enough to actually proclaim the things that Perl does well?

Now I realise I’m ranting, but it’s entirely possible that I’ll need to be looking for a new job in the near future and I’m not entirely convinced I’ll be able to get one working with Perl. I’d love to be able to blame this on someone, but to be honest it’s entirely our own fault. As Perl developers we simply aren’t doing enough!