My graphic design and Web development business has been using Perl to develop Web applications for nearly a decade. We have our own custom CMS with e-commerce, registration, contact, job application, and signup modules, to name a few.

However, as of late, we've gotten several Request for Proposals (RFP's) in which existing and potentially new clients have specifically expressed a concern about the ability to maintain our/their Web apps written in Perl should my business go bust.

I'm beginning to think it's a more legitimate concern today than 10 years ago when I chose Perl as my language of choice. The immense popularity of PHP due to open-source systems like WordPress, Joomla, Typo3, and Drupal have raised up a new crop of PHP coders, lots of them (see the chart on my personal node). From the looks of it, you could throw a rock in any direction and hit a PHP coder. I've also considered Rails (Ruby) and Django (Python) but from the looks of it, those are not strong contenders either.

So, I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of continuing to develop in Perl when I'm having my own doubts and wanting to do the responsible thing for my clients. Through I much prefer Perl over PHP (separation of presentation and execution, etc.), and strongly feel that all things being equal, Perl is a much better choice.

Am I overlooking anything? I need some objective wisdom.

Thanks!