Why should I use Perl instead of Ruby/Python/etc? [closed]

Question

I love Ruby and have been using it for a few years to handle day-to-day scripting tasks. Lately however, I've had a number of people tell me that Perl is where it's at. I have nothing against Perl, but it seems like it's kind of fallen behind the times a bit.

However, that's probably just my perception, so I'm asking all of you, what makes Perl so great? I'm genuinely seeking information here; I'd like to understand why this language has such ardent followers.

Answer 1

I know a good handful of hackers who left Perl to go to Ruby. Python is obviously a nice language too. I am neither saying nor implying anything against either.

Pros for Perl 5

• Since about 2005 or so Perl has been in a fairly dramatic renaissance in both CPAN and core releases. Perl 6 has helped drive this by sending concepts like role-oriented OO back. Strawberry Perl has made Perl hacking on Windows more like *nix.
• The CPAN is huge, still growing, and most of the more widely used authors/teams are responsive to bugfixes. Most popular Perl modules are tested widely and well. CPAN testers recently sent their 10 millionth test report.
• Many of the big kits have good communities associated where expert help is available quickly.
• The tool chain has become very flexible.
  • The combination of perlbrew, local::lib, and cpanminus lets users (even without root) have an arbitrary number of perl versions and libraries accessible on the same box.
• Many of things that Java, Ruby, Python do right come back to Perl and with facility. For example–
  • KinoSearch is Lucene but even faster by some benchmarks.
  • Catalyst is Rails but more flexible. It’s a completely agnostic C with regards to the M and V.
  • Plack is Python’s WSGI + Ruby’s Rack.
• It’s as fast and personal or readable and robust as you want it to be.
  • A short one-liner can edit every HTML file in your tree when you’re in a hurry to fix something.
  • A clear and robust program with error reporting, logging, and feedback built on any of the 6 or 7 suitable HTML/XML packages could do the same for a client.
• Perlmonks. Though there are notable exceptions, the Perl community is generally friendly, helpful, and positive.
• There are quite a few good Perl jobs waiting to be filled. The back and forth between the high level languages has left oodles of Perl in the wild without a matching crop of Perl-centric devs. (I get 5-7 cold calls from recruiters a year.)
• It’s fun. In quotes: “Perl has the happiest users.” I can’t speak to the scientific nature of that but I can say I only program today because Perl exists. Many other Perl hackers share this stupid giddiness for the language.

Keep in mind it’s not a zero sum game. The more languages you can wield, the better.

Answer 2

If I had to name one great strength of Perl, it's one word: CPAN.

Having worked with Ruby as well, I'd not say that Perl is necessarily better or worse, but definitely more mature. It is, after all, much older. However, it's not decrepit. It has plenty of modern stuff, e.g., Moose and the 5.10 and 5.12 updates have fixed a lot of problems that the ancient 5.0.x had.

(And if you're wondering: Perl 5 and Perl 6 are different languages. The similar name is an unfortunate mistake. Though Perl 5 does borrow ideas from Perl 6 and vice versa.)

Answer 3

CPAN.

The syntax of Perl is sometimes painful to look at but it is available on Unix machines everywhere and with the command line access to the huge number of packages in CPAN (which can also be accessed via browser), Perl is the de facto standard because of its broad applicability and availability.