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05.18.10
Perl's Staying Power Advertised Again
 By
Doug Caverly
ActiveState is a company that specializes in dynamic languages, and whether or not you've heard of it, it's quite successful, with a long list of customers that includes impressive organizations like Cisco, HP, and Lockheed Martin. Which sets Perl professionals up for a nice surprise, because ActiveState's director of engineering has argued that Perl is here to stay.
Jeff Hobbs wrote a post for OStatic to argue this point, and there are perhaps lots of subjective ways in which Perl has other languages beat. A catalog of past accomplishments and implementations is impressive, too.
But Hobbs provided some very practical and solid "signs of life", stating, "One only has to look to see that Perl is still thriving. Search Google Code Search for Perl (with the lang:perl search operator) and you'll receive more than half a million results. Ruby is shy of 400,000, Python has a respectable 465,000 results. To be fair, PHP outstrips them with more than 800,000, but that only speaks to the fact that PHP is also amazingly popular."
Hobbs pointed out, as well, "Perl may not be as buzzword compliant as PHP or Python, but it's every bit as relevant in the job market. Perhaps more so. A recent search for Perl jobs on Dice.com turned up 4,126 matches against PHP's 2,127. Python matched only 1,742, and .Net only 1,025. Searching LinkedIn turns up 403 results, Python 352, and .Net 439 results. Is this an authoritative metric? No, but it does demonstrate that Perl still commands attention in the job market."
And of course, with the support of Hobbs and ActiveState, it becomes even less likely that Perl will drop off the map.
About
the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.
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