zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
In fairness, Perl died because it was just not a good language compared to others that popped up after its peak. Sometimes people just move to the better option.

>>mmastr+53
Perl is a great language, the way Scala and Haskell are great: as openly experimental languages, they tried interesting, unorthodox approaches, with varied success. "More than one way to do it" is Perl's motto, because of its audacious experimentation ethos, I'd say.

Perl is not that good a language though for practical purposes. The same way, a breadboard contraption is not what you want to ship as your hardware product, but without it, and the mistakes made and addressed while tinkering with it, the sleek consumer-grade PCB won't be possible to design.

>>nine_k+c5
It could have used a good "Perl: the Good Parts" book.

With a team where everybody wrote it in a similar style, Perl did perfectly well. Mod_perl was fast. I liked Perl.

Then Django came out, and then Numpy, and Perl lost. But Python is still so incredibly slow....

>>Scarbl+Sb
Check out "Perl Best Practices" by Damien Conway, and the more recent "Modern Perl" by Chromatic. Both can be had as paperbacks, and I think both are also available free on online.

>>tasty_+Sh
I'll go further. Ignore the Perl specific bits and Conway's "Perl Best Practices" is one of the best general programming books ever written.

It has so many great pieces of advice that apply to any programming task, everything from naming variables, to testing, error handling, code organization, documentation, etc, etc. Ultimately, for timeless advice on programming as a profession the language is immaterial.