[DCPM] Speaking of Perl

[Martijn Grooten]

How widely is it used these days?

When I was at university in the second half of the 90s -- and was
first introduced to Unix -- it was the thing everyone who wanted to do
more than send emails and browse the web used. Now I can see why PHP
has taken over for website development, as it is a lot more
user-friendly, and Linux had become a lot less CLI-dependent but for
anything that involves processing text data, it is still a great, fast
and simple tool to use. It is my main tool in my job, which involves
email processing and a bit of web development, and I wouldn't want to
use something else.

However, when I talk to people who know a a bit about programming and
stuff and tell them I mostly use Perl, they stare at me as if I just
told them I browse the web using Quarterdeck Mosaic.

So do people still use Perl professionally? Privately? Are new people
(say at uni) still learning Perl?

Martijn.