It's not a PR problem. People have been trying to fix the "PR problem" for at least half a decade. If that were the issue they would have made headway by now.
The real issue is that a new programming language can be quite an investment. Some people learn lots of languages but many people actually stick with just one. Perl has nothing compelling over the other languages. You don't really lose anything buy picking e.g. Python or Ruby instead. So people tend to pick a language based on what cool new thing is written in it and that cool new thing is never in perl. Perl always rushes in later with a "me too" copy but it's never where a new breakthrough happens.
One could argue that "cool new things" being never written in perl _is_ a ~marketing~ problem.
I think the GP was actually trying to say that the traction is missing for an otherwise nice and mature/stable infrastructure. A couple of "shiny" projects that boldly host with a powered by perl on their page might bring in fresh blood..
One could equally argue that not jumping on new concepts until they've been demonstrated to have real world value is an advantage.
As a community, we tend to like to really think about things before implementing them - which means that while new ideas might turn up in perl a bit later than in other places, they tend to turn up in a well thought out way that we can confidently maintain backwards compatibility with over time.
When you're writing code that may still be in production in five or ten years, this tends to be an advantage.
Not only that, but the threat of a non-backwards compatible upgrade being just around the corner is a major point against picking up Perl at this time, and the uncertain release time frame of Perl 6 makes that not exactly an attractive choice for a language to learn.
perl6 is a separate language designed by some of the same people.
I'm a perl5 hacker at heart and intend to continue to be.
The latest version of perl5 is version 12.3, released rather recently.
The websites for both languages now make this clear, but we'll probably need to rename them both to "-something- perl" for people to stop being confused by the names. Maybe in the next year or so.
The Zope community experienced similar (self inflicted) branding damage with Zope 3. The goal of Zope 3 was to build a next-generation rapid app development toolkit, incorporating lessons learned over the life of Zope 2. This is perfectly laudable goal, but developers heard "zope" and thought they could leverage existing knowledge, best practices, and tools. Then they learned that "zope 2" products wouldn't work under zope 3. Then they learned how much they would have to unlearn from one project to the other. Then they gnashed their terrible teeth, and roared their terrible roars, and finally the zope 3 developers got the message and renamed their framework "Bluebream." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueBream )
As someone who worked at a shop that migrated from python/Zope to java/hibernate/GWT during the "zope 3 WTF?" days, I can attest that the confusion created by poor naming choices, and the lack of clarity in product roadmaps, was indeed a factor in deciding to migrate entirely away from Zope.
Perl 6 is not really an upgrade, except in the most general sense. It's a new Perlish language, and Perl 5 will have a long and happy life besides Perl 6, even when (if?) the latter is used in production.
Just because it has been a while doesn't mean it's not a PR problem. I know I'm not alone in the group of people who know and have used Perl, but just don't use it anymore. There's no big investment required, I've just moved on.
The first is that Perl 5 (the mature language) suffered greatly from the premature announcement of the Perl 6 project, more than ten years ago, which still hasn't shipped anything as stable and mature as, say, Python 3. (Several years ago, someone at my company showed up to work carrying a book entitled "Perl 6 Today". I asked where he'd gotten the time machine.)
The second is that if you look at blog posts and the like from inside the Perl community, such as it now is, you get the impression that it's the kind of crowd that thinks they're smarter than everyone else because no one else gets their inside jokes. Which comes from the top --- Larry Wall seems to think he's really clever when he justifies some of Perl's more dubious features by pointing out that natural languages do that too. But natural language has a full human intelligence at the other end sorting out the ambiguities, and even then, we still sometimes get it wrong. "Rakudo Star" is not that smart, much less Perl 5.
Please tell me you aren't comparing the timelines of Perl6 with Python3? That is ludicrous. Py3 is an incremental change while P6 is a total re-write of the language. Not even in the same league.
No, I'm saying that ten years is a long time for Perl 5 to be under the shadow of an anointed successor which has yet to show up --- something which is a real problem now for the Python folks even though they're going through a smaller change which was better managed in every respect.
So many of the improvements in the Perl ecosystem--especially the Perl 5 ecosystem--have their roots in Perl 6 it's difficult to say that Perl 5 is in its shadow. If anything, Perl 6 rejuvenated Perl 5: http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/07/milestones-in-the-...
The poem posted with the announcement is below. Come join us on the mountain top.
--
I saw a huge steam roller,
It blotted out the sun.
The people all lay down, lay down;
They did not try to run.
My love and I, we looked amazed
Upon the gory mystery.
'Lie down, lie down!' the people cried.
'The great machine is history!'
My love and I, we ran away,
The engine did not find us.
We ran up to a mountain top,
Left history far behind us.
Perhaps we should have stayed and died,
But somehow we don't think so.
We went to see where history'd been,
And my, the dead did stink so.
Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
"Reflections on Not Participating in Current Events"
Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features.
One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)).
As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package.
I teach a course that uses perl. I really wish we used something else. Perl on Windows is a clusterfuck; including core modules that ship broken. I don't really use Windows, except helping my students get stuff running, so maybe programming in general is a clusterfuck on Windows?
Perl 5.12.3 represents approximately four months of development since Perl 5.12.2 and contains approximately 2500 lines of changes across 54 files from 16 authors.
Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.3:
[...], Father Chrysostomos, [...] !!!
Good to see Father Chrysostomos cranking out the code in between delivering presents around the world with his team of flying reindeer. Um. Seems like there's at least one Joycean nerd Perl hacker out there, I seem to remember that this is a coinage from near the beginning of Ulysses and it translates from ancient greek into modern English as Golden Mouth?
Actually, while he may be a closet Joycean, I think he's indeed an Orthodox religious figure. I've shared some mailing lists with him, and got this impression although I don't recall it being directly discussed. I could be wrong, but your reindeer comments might be more impolite than you intended.
Of course I didn't mean to impolite, apologies if I caused any offense. Hey - different cultural background, please no more down-votes, thanks!
From Wikipedia: James Joyce's novel Ulysses includes a character named Mulligan who brings 'Chrysostomos' into another character's mind because Mulligan's gold-stopped teeth and his gift of the gab earn him the title which St. John Chrysostom's preaching earned him, 'golden-mouthed':[45] Chrysostomos also refers to Stephen, the independent and exiled genius: "He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos."
I think you might be a bit confused. Father (John) Chrysostomos, aka Ioannis Xrysostomos in Greek, was an archbishop in Constantinople. He was renounced for his preaching skills thus the translation "Golder mouth". I'm pretty sure he's not Santa.
When I went to see the state of perl a few months back I noticed the language is maturing, CPAN is still strong.
I think they have a PR problem.