Well, in the very long term, no programming language
has a future.
In the next ten to twenty years, I expect Perl 5 to
continue to be widely used; there is just too much mission
critical software already written in it for it to disappear overnight.
Because of this, maintaining backward compatibility, as Perl 5 has largely done, is vital, IMHO.
In contrast, I felt that Python 3/Ruby 1.9 broke backward compatibility without a good enough reason.
Based on random anecdotes from workmates, having Moose in the Perl core should help continue the Perl 5 renaissance.
Out of curiosity, I compared Perl's TIOBE index
from three years ago:
Dec Dec Delta
2011 2010 Language Rating Dec 2010
1 1 Java 17.561% -0.44%
2 2 C 17.057% +0.98%
3 3 C++ 8.252% -0.76%
4 5 C# 8.205% +1.52%
5 8 Objective-C 6.805% +3.56%
6 4 PHP 6.001% -1.51%
7 7 (Visual) Basic 4.757% -0.36%
8 6 Python 3.492% -2.99%
9 9 Perl 2.472% +0.14%
10 12 JavaScript 2.199% +0.69%
11 11 Ruby 1.494% -0.29%
with
today:
Oct Oct Delta
2014 2013 Language Rating Oct 2013
1 1 C 17.655% +0.41%
2 2 Java 13.506% -2.60%
3 3 Objective-C 10.096% +1.10%
4 4 C++ 4.868% -3.80%
5 6 C# 4.748% -0.97%
6 7 Basic 3.507% -1.31%
7 5 PHP 2.942% -3.15%
8 8 Python 2.333% -0.77%
9 12 Perl 2.116% +0.51%
12 10 JavaScript 1.771% -0.27%
16 13 Ruby 1.128% -0.12%
17 81 Dart 1.119% +1.03%
As a dynamic language nut, I was saddened to see that
Perl, Python and Ruby have all slipped in the past three years.
Somewhat to my surprise, Perl seems to be outperforming Python and Ruby, at least on TIOBE.
See also: