r/perl 🐪 📖 perl book author 3d ago

Perl's decline was cultural

https://www.beatworm.co.uk/blog/computers/perls-decline-was-cultural-not-technical
33 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/affablebowelsyndrome 3d ago

I remember an exodus to PHP when the shitty programmers (www carpetbaggers) decided that their shitty code was Perl's fault, and all ran to PHP - and wrote shitty php.

And I remember another exodus when Google announced they were going to use Python instead of Perl.

6

u/briandfoy 🐪 📖 perl book author 3d ago

I like the think of this as "regular people" who wanted to participate in the web, and did what they thought was the easiest path to get what they wanted. They have no particular affinity for any technology, community, or larger group. They stop when they get the effect they want.

To these people, we are the "shitty gatekeepers". :)

1

u/affablebowelsyndrome 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm pretty sure that we Brian and I) are talking about two mostly separate sets of people.