I don’t see what the fuss is, anyway. Perl’s mainstream popularity may be waning, but how does that affect me? Java (which I truly find painful; but that is my preference and whether others agree is their business) is not the only option if I can’t write Perl for a living – there are other enjoyable languages. And even when I’m not writing Perl for a living, that doesn’t mean I don’t get to use Perl at all. And right now, I am being paid to write Perl, and I’m quite confident that I will find more people who would pay me to write Perl.

Remember Perl’s mascot is a camel. It is not a peacock. Perl is quite comfortable doing the dirty work in the trenches. That’s how it got here at all and that’s why it’s still around. I don’t believe for a second those cries that it’s dying.

Perl has a lot of history. There’s a lot of cruft in there. People are always after the “new” and shiny things; we in the IT industry are a huge flock of fashion-chasers. So it’s no wonder that the front and center attention is going elsewhere; but that doesn’t diminish the usefulness of Perl at all.

(Sorry, I’m rambling. Hopefully you get the general idea of what I was trying to say.)

Makeshifts last the longest.