I have been writing software "professionally" since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it. Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it. As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time.
> -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of > Kyle Banerjee > Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:28 PM > To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I? > > BTW, I think perl gets the short shrift as a utility language. People > hate it because it's ugly, but for data manipulation and analysis, it's > very practical.