[chromatic]

A language like Perl ... has no compelling technical features or metaprogramming facilities for people to continue to use and expand it when another shiny new language comes along.

See the CPAN and especially modules such as PPI, Moose, and Devel::Declare.

[sedachv]

And that still hasn't stopped the Perl 5 community from feelings of inferiority (see http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/03/perl-5-is-dying-a-f... for example), and more importantly it hasn't stopped Perl 6 from being built. Which is a shame, because I would much rather have seen something like Perl on Rails, or in any case work going towards building on all the stuff already there in CPAN instead of duplicating all that work in PHP and then Python and then Ruby and then maybe even Perl 6 sometime this decade.

[chromatic]

Why does Perl 5 need a Rails? Despite the existence of Rails, Perl 5 is still more widely used than Ruby. (Perl 5 and Ruby 1 came out around the same time.)

[sedachv]

"Why does Perl 5 need a Rails?"

So O'Reilly can sell books about it.*

"Despite the existence of Rails, Perl 5 is still more widely used than Ruby."

Who is writing new projects in Perl 5? Ruby will also have a lot of legacy code in five years.

* If you thought that was a joke, you're still missing the point.

[chromatic]

If you thought that was a joke, you're still missing the point.

I suffer no illusion that their sales numbers have any correlation to the popularity or efficacy of a technology. Their Ruby book sales crashed in 2007, for example.

Who is writing new projects in Perl 5?

I know of many, many new projects written in Perl 5. So far this year I've worked on three and have another later in the year.

[sedachv]

"I suffer no illusion that their sales numbers have any correlation to the popularity or efficacy of a technology."

I guess all that PR and advertising from dozens of publishing, training, analyst and consulting firms is a giant waste of money?