Java, C++, or whatever are about formalism, which is easy to teach.
Perl is about getting work done, which is less easy to teach.
I haven't seen Perl in any curricula other than extension courses.
Extension courses tend to focus on practical things (real estate
licenses, various IT certificates, and so on).
Exception is biology and bioinformatics, where there
is a large enough body of work in Perl that it is a
first language for many.
It is not all that hard to teach formalism with Perl,
problem is that the prof's have to introduce it rather
than the compiler. I also don't know how many of them
rejected Perl4 and never looked at the language again.
--
Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647
+1 800 762 1582
