As someone (Neils Bohr, I think) said, "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future". Still, I believe that Perl has considerable life left to it. The reason has very little to do with the number of features available.

Features are OK, but they are a two-edged sword. It's nice to have convenient features made a part of the language, but the more features there are, the more details you've got to remember. It can make the language very cluttered. I think Perl's approach is particularly wise in this regard. The "features" aren't all built into the language itself; many are available in the core module set; and others can be gotten from CPAN. Thus you can pick and choose the features you want without cluttering the language with things you may never need.

Having said this, I still think that the number of features isn't what makes a language popular; I think it's the language's usefulness. By "usefulness" I mean the ability to get things done with that language, with a minimum of needless work. Perl fits this better than any other language with which I have any familiarity. There might be something better, but so far I haven't run across it.

As I said, the modules are what I believe makes Perl so utterly useful. Common programming challenges have been examined, and solutions created and shared with the community. I don't have to write my own sort routines; I don't need to worry about the details of TCP/IP. I can use modules that handle all the ugly details, and focus on whatever tasks I need to.

Some other language might theoretically supplant Perl. If that happens, I don't see how it would be a bad thing. It would have to be *better* than Perl. It seems to me that if someone did manage to produce something better than Perl, it's a no-lose situation. If it's better, it's better.

But I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Perl is well established in its own right. Right now, Perl 5 does so much, and so well, that making something better is terribly difficult. I think this is one of the reasons Perl 6 is coming so slowly - Perl 5 is a really tough act to follow, even for Larry Wall and friends. I think it's way too early to mourn over the downfall of perl.