[Wellington-pm] How much perl is out there?

[Cliff Pratt]

On 30/05/10 13:30, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Dale DuRose<dale.durose at gmail.com>  writes:
>> On 30/05/2010 10:44 a.m., Cliff Pratt wrote:
>>> On 29/05/10 19:44, dale.durose wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have a question is perl still being used commonly in the new
>>>> zealand IT industry? I know in the past it was used for most web
>>>> applications. So i imagine its holding strong with the system
>>>> administrators out there?
>>>>
>>> I'd be surprised if it were "used for most web applications". Something like
>>> PHP would be more likely used for that.
>>>
>>> We use it mostly for sysadmin stuff.
>>
>> About 10 years ago it was used for most web applications. Maybe even longer
>> than 10.
>
> Heh.  History.  You tell the kids today that Perl once had the reputation that
> PHP has, that it was used for all those awful throw-away one-shot CGI things
> that were the bane of security administrators lives, and they don't believe
> you.
>
Cheeky sod! My first Web Server was downloaded from NCSA. It came with 
one or two shell scripts to demonstrate CGI, but, so far as I can 
remember, no Perl.
 >
> Back then we had to hand-code our requests out of CGI.pm, too, and it was
> up-hill both ways.
>
Well, originally (and it is still the case) CGI programs read Standard 
Input and wrote to Standard Output. Arguably Perl CGI.pm obscures much 
of the detail.
 >
> Seriously: Perl was, once, the king of CGI.  These days?  Big in a whole bunch
> of places, mostly by virtue of graduating from a "cool" language to a serious
> one.
>
> It joins FORTRAN, COBOL, C, C++, and other luminaries that are no longer the
> cool way to do exciting new things, but which get plenty of real work done.
 >
No doubt. I still use Perl CGI on a daily basis.

Cheers,

Cliff