Bob Browning's blog

Is Perl old hat. Shouldwe all be retraining in the latest shiny thing to pass by (Ruby on Rails I think)?

I have been programming for more years than I can mention and every few years a new language comes along that absolutely everyone has to get into because the old languages are dead.

The fact is that since PL/1, which was the first 3GL to combine the requirements of commercial and scientific users, the world has only needed at most one more language. Sadly not one that has been created: PL/2 the object-oriented version of PL/1.

I use Perl from day to day because it is there. It is no better or worse overall than all the others. I can deliver solutions with it, and frankly that is all I care about.

Bob