Tim states the facts. That being said I believe his most important statement is, . . . the folks creating Perl 6 have a history of "seeing around corners" and developing features that turn out to be just right for some emerging market.

The web is still young

Hm, the answer reads a lot like Tim thinks people only program in one language. I'm not saying he believes that, just how it sounds.

Yes, Ruby and Python have been gaining in popularity; that's great, I think, as more languages are better. But, I also think that there's a lot of crossover. I know I prefer Perl to any other language (just personal taste), but I'm learning Ruby (for Ruby on Rails) and Python; the former sounds like a great fit for some of the DB-based applications I work with, and the latter is a requirement for maintaining some code I've been handed at work.

Still, I haven't abandoned Perl in favor of these; in fact, learning Python has made me appreciate Perl even more (because Perl is more like how I think, and Python is very unlike how I think; totally subjective opinions, here, folks). I don't see how having growth in other languages reduces the relevance of Perl.

Besides, I have had more clients approach me as a result of my Perl skills in recent months than ever before. If anything, Perl may be less "exciting" than it used to be, but it is becoming accepted as a cross-platform workhorse for automation, prototyping, and web development.

As eric256 suggests, Tim's looking from a book perspective. The picture is a lot more complicated; consider that O'Reilly published only a handful of niche Perl books for a couple of years while expanding and updating the available PHP and Python titles.

This is not a research project untouched by the observer. Releasing a new edition of the Camel or the Panther or even the Llama affects the market profoundly. (Is a Camel from 2000 still viable and valuable? Yes, but try convincing a bookseller that in 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006. I believe you'll have a more difficult time every year, even if you can demonstrate that it outsells even more recent books.)

When I first saw perl, it was one of those scripts you find for free out on the internet (you know the kind i am sure.). That script did what i needed it to, but it was a horrible mess. My first thought was, how do i program this in something besides perl because perl is such an obvious mess. Now looking back I understand that it wasn't perl, but the author that was a mess. We all know perl is a language that allows messy programming, this fact carries over to his comments on perl 6. When i first started with perl 6 (pugs if you will) I thought this is crazy, why did they make it so complex. After a little programming you find out that perl 6 is actualy quite a bit simpler and has more DWIMery than ever before, it just happens that it doesn't look like the perl we all know.

That all said my point is this, his comments on perl where that of a market share of books. I would think that langauge that don't make much since will NEED more books and that this might be some of the reason you see large shares of books for those other languages. The other is that perl is meant for programmers, granted programmers without the time (or desire) to write in c++. As a programmer my self i own only two perl books, read both ciover to cover and havn't felt the need to buy anymore (and i love books).

Since my point still seems to have eluded me let me just say, perl is incredibly usefuly, and perl 6 is even more soo. So I don't think his comments where realy bad or good, he kind of side stepped the question, but my answer is ... yes perl is more relevant now than ever in its history.

Do we always have to make excuses?

No, but some of us would like to understand if any parts of the criticism are actually useful to us today. One can make all sorts of statements about things that might or might not have been, and one can throw around terms like "snobbery", but the simple fact is that the people in charge of Perl in 1996 weren't interested in or capable of turning Perl into PHP. And it's not at all clear that if we'd tried, we'd have succeeded. Or if we'd succeeded, that we'd be happy with the result today. I'm pretty happy with where Perl 5 actually got to, considering its limitations.

But progress depends on the seesaw between the better-is-better approach and the worse-is-better approach. The first 14 years of Perl were mostly built on the worse-is-better approach, and eventually you run into the inevitable fact that a large enough pile of worse things ends up stinking. So you can view the Perl 6 effort as an attempt to introduce a better-is-better cycle into the mix, where part of that cycle is to design intentionally for the next worse-is-better cycle. Only time will tell if we're succeeding in that.

But let me tell you that from the inside it doesn't feel like a case of computer science envy. It feels a lot more like a heavy commitment to make Perl 6 the best language we can for keeping programming fun in the 21st century. That's a commitment in time, in money, and in the realization that we'd have to take a lot of cultural flack to get where we want to go. That's okay--we knew that going in, though perhaps we underestimated the scale of those commitments. But we're in this for the long haul, and over the long haul, I think the sacrifices will be worth it, one way or another.

But progress depends on the seesaw between the better-is-better approach and the worse-is-better approach. The first 14 years of Perl were mostly built on the worse-is-better approach, and eventually you run into the inevitable fact that a large enough pile of worse things ends up stinking.

I'm very intrigued by your post. Can you give an example of "worse-is-better" in the design of Perl before Perl 6?

Update: Clarified the wording.

the lowliest monk

...the better-is-better ....the worse-is-better

Hi,
Can you explain what do you mean with those two terms?
Regards,
Edward

Exploring the reasons for the ratio of book sales among different languages (and indeed, among older and newer titles, and later editions, within a language) can inform us of the dynamics of language adoption, use, development, and (shudder) disfavor and abandonment. It is a complex relationship.

To me the more important question is:

Why did the original questioner think the question was interesting?

Is Perl, being perhaps in middle age as far as languages go, sufficiently simple, yet powerful and well documented, with both the interpreter and documentation freely available on the Net, limiting its own book sales?

Are Java, C/C++, and Visual Basic so cumbersome, arcane, or difficult to use that they require a small library self-help tomes to compensate?

Is Ruby so easy to use that only a few books will ever be sold?

Well, Tim is talking about Perl from his vantage point, which has to do with selling books. He keeps referring to Perl's "market", and there really isn't any such thing. It's free.

Right now, many of us are waiting for Perl 6. If we're cheap (like me), we'll hold off on buying books until some come out for Perl 6. I think that may well be part of what is causing other languages to seem more popular.

Anyway, I like Perl, and I will keep using it for a while. Other languages seem intriguing - I kind of like the idea of Python's formatting having significance - but right now Perl is doing everything I could ever ask of a language (Well, everything I ask *NOW*). I've already invested quite a bit of time in learning it (and yes, buying the books). Until I find myself hampered by some limitation of Perl, I have no good reason to switch.

Anyway, I haven't seen another community as helpful as Perl Monks, for any other language. Maybe they're out there, but I haven't found any. I'd rather stay here and get help, than strike out on my own with some new and possibly "faddish" language.

The semantics of Perl6 are a superset of the semantics of Perl5, and the syntax isn't that different.

Or, do you want to ignore Perl for the two years it'll still take for Perl6 to be deployed?

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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