Perl's Current State: Examining Usage Data and Challenging the 'Perl is Dead' Narrative
By
speckx
Crisped on the outside, thoughtful enough on the inside.
Summary
The article challenges the common narrative that Perl is dead, presenting evidence that Perl's usage remains stable at levels similar to the dotcom bubble era. The author uses CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) data from 2023 as a proxy for Perl's popularity, acknowledging its limitations but considering it the best available metric. The article takes a contrarian position against the 'Perl is dead' meme while still planning to explore what factors contributed to Perl's perceived decline.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledTrick question! Perl is not dead.
The cpan Report 2023 put together by Neil Bowers quite clearly illustrates that Perl's popularity is somewhere in the same range it was during the dotcom bubble.
I realise cpan usage isn't a perfect proxy.
There are probably a lot of people like me who use Perl specifically for things where they don't need to interact with third-party libraries.
But it's the best proxy I have.
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