I never claimed that Perl wasn't powerful ... in fact I think I stated the opposite. Where I work, Perl is the lingua franca of the ops team and they certainly get things done. But the newbies don't shoot holes in their foot ... they blow it clear off and often don't survive.
My comment above may be perceived as a bit trollish but I was also thinking about "thanking Perl for a job well done". I quit Perl for what I consider valid reasons (which you completely dismiss - My experience may be "anecdotal" to you, but it's still my experience) which you're clearly not going to agree with. But notice that I never said "you shouldn't use it". I'll even admit that some people accomplish a lot with it ... and that CPAN is almost the gold standard for everything (with the exception of Maven Central I think).
So keep using Perl if you want ... but hopefully now you'll understand those of us that will no longer use it and why it's popularity is declining (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....). I expect I'll replace my current tools with something better (more productive/safer/maintainable) in the next 5 years since that's been a continuing pattern for me. What will you be using in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years?
Newbies writing code for things like (say) fiddling with directory trees should absolutely be writing unit tests, using VMs, etc. so that the worst outcome is that they waste time. Which isn't necessary if they devote some attention to properly learning the language.
I never claimed that Perl wasn't powerful ... in fact I think I stated the opposite. Where I work, Perl is the lingua franca of the ops team and they certainly get things done. But the newbies don't shoot holes in their foot ... they blow it clear off and often don't survive.
My comment above may be perceived as a bit trollish but I was also thinking about "thanking Perl for a job well done". I quit Perl for what I consider valid reasons (which you completely dismiss - My experience may be "anecdotal" to you, but it's still my experience) which you're clearly not going to agree with. But notice that I never said "you shouldn't use it". I'll even admit that some people accomplish a lot with it ... and that CPAN is almost the gold standard for everything (with the exception of Maven Central I think).
So keep using Perl if you want ... but hopefully now you'll understand those of us that will no longer use it and why it's popularity is declining (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....). I expect I'll replace my current tools with something better (more productive/safer/maintainable) in the next 5 years since that's been a continuing pattern for me. What will you be using in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years?