If you don't use Perl, it's easy to think it's dying because you don't see how extensively it's used every day. I really don't have problems getting Perl jobs and frankly, from my perspective working with the Perl Foundation, I'm quite pleased at how much more widespread Perl is than I had previously thought. However, what if you do use Perl extensively? You see that its phenomenal growth rate has slowed down and you start to get nervous when you see the silly "Perl is Dead" type of talk. The reality is simple: Perl could never sustain its growth rate and now we see its popularity going through up and down cycles. That's pretty much what we see out of any other popular language.

For more evidence, see the TIOBE programming index. Despite dropping, Perl is currently in 6th place. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of languages used all over the planet for production work, Perl is solidly in the top 10. Regardless of what your field is, wouldn't you be happy to be in the top 10 out of hundreds? Probably.

If people are concerned about Perl, there are legitimate reasons to be. Perl is showing its age. We've broken a lot of ground for dynamic languages and more recent languages have learned from our mistakes. That's a nice little gift for them, but Perl's use is extremely widespread and it's going to be around for a long time to come.