Re: Defending Perl

My (fairly large, well known, London-based) company is casting out Perl in favour of Ruby. Even though we have 0 Ruby expertise in house, several Perl programmers, and plenty of Perl stuff in place. One of the main reasons is the difficulty in recruiting Perl programmers, or in working with consultancies who don't deal with Perl at all. (I think there may also be some misconceptions about how much of an advantage Ruby gives you over Perl as well, a lot to do with the quality of our existing Perl code base, some of which is 10 years old, and a source of pain).

The reality of programming languages (and lots of things in business) is that just because X is better than Y, doesn't mean X will be successful, especially if Y is new (but mature), cool, has peripheral advantages (like lots of people using it, quantity beats out quality too), and the meme that Y is better than X is widespread, regardless of whether it's true (Ruby is the successor to Perl, according to some people).

I don't think Perl 5 will ever get back that "mindshare". Perl 6, on the other hand, could end up being either:

A white elephant - not in the right time/place to make a huge impact, and not useful enough or too complicated for it to replace the usual Perl 5 niches
Continue where Perl 5 is now, and replace a lot of the niches it currently occupies, plus expanding into a few more, but not really progressing.
Be exactly what everyone is looking for, create the right amount of buzz, and rival some of the "big players".

I have no doubt Perl 6 will be a thing of beauty when it is finally ready for production use. But I don't think that guarentees it's success (in terms of how widely it's used, especially for commercial/enterprise use). I don't think the people involved are really too worried about these things, they just want to create something awesome (which, paradoxically, is often the way to make something popular).

Perl 6 is probably the only hope we have of Perl regaining the status it had in the "enterprise" in the late '90s. And even if it did that, it would be the first language (AFAIK) to make that sort of comeback.

(For the record, I hope it does :)

Comment on Re: Defending Perl

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Re^2: Defending Perl by chromatic (Archbishop) on Nov 16, 2007 at 23:09 UTC
The idea that it's easier to recruit Ruby programmers than Perl programmers in London completely astounds me. ... unless your company finds it easier to recruit Ruby programmers willing to work for 25K pounds.	[reply]
Re^3: Defending Perl by runrig (Abbot) on Nov 16, 2007 at 23:22 UTC
You haven't seen the people with the signs that say "Will program (in Ruby) for food (or Ł25K)"??	[reply]
Re^3: Defending Perl by Mutant (Priest) on Nov 17, 2007 at 12:13 UTC
Well, I think there's certainly a money factor involved. There aren't many graduate Perl programmers around these days, there are plenty of Ruby ones (even if they didn't learn Ruby during their degree).	[reply]
Re^2: Defending Perl by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Nov 17, 2007 at 06:22 UTC
Even though we have 0 Ruby expertise in house, several Perl programmers, and plenty of Perl stuff in place. Is this switch from Perl to Ruby for new projects only? Or are you planning on rewriting large chunks of working Perl code in Ruby? If the latter, that seems like a poor business decision to me, as argued by Joel Spolsky.	[reply]
Re^3: Defending Perl by Mutant (Priest) on Nov 17, 2007 at 12:07 UTC
New projects only. Actually, the sort of projects Ruby will be used for are ones we don't actually do ourselves at the moment, because a 3rd party will come in and offer to do it in PHP or Ruby for much cheaper than we can. Historically they were done in Perl, but it's not a simple case of Ruby replacing Perl. Still, the reasons why Perl is not an option are kind of interesting. As I said, I think there are some perceived (though not necessarily true) deficiencies with Perl, coupled with the feeling that Perl programmers are expensive and hard to find, while Ruby programmers (and especially consultancies), are cheaper, easier to find, and likely to continue to be in the future. This would be far less notable if it were confined to just my company, but I think it's a growing feeling across the industry, at least in London.	[reply]
Re^3: Defending Perl by ait (Hermit) on Nov 17, 2007 at 12:47 UTC
Excellent article a must read! Especially for managers who want to throw away perfectly working applications just because they are old (or are written in an "old" language). I have a friend who threw away perfectly working in-house code in favor of MS Great Plains, and after more than a year, and many, many thousand dollars they realize their business has had no real benefit from it, worse yet, the new system is actually less functional and limited.	[reply]


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