[grzm]

> "The Perl erasure in this HN thread is startling."

"Erasure" to me implies some active effort to remove Perl from discourse. I don't see anything like that here: indeed, there are a number of positive mentions, and no negative ones I see. Granted, Python and Ruby are both mentioned more often, but none of those is at Perl's expense. Am I misunderstanding what you mean by 'erasure'?

[gbacon]

This is what Perl is designed to be. Perl unlike the others is almost certain to be on any Unix or Linux installation. Several commenters leaving out Perl in discussions of the next step up from bash scripts is truly strange.

I suppose being ignored beats the typical herp-derp anti-Perl bigotry, but I’d prefer all-around civility.

[grzm]

> "Several commenters leaving out Perl in discussions of the next step up from bash scripts is truly odd."

I'm having a hard time following you here. Do you think that they're doing so for any other reason that Perl is no longer their go-to tool? There are communities where Perl is still used: PostgreSQL for example uses Perl for some of its scripting, as well as its build farm tool, in particular because of its portability on older systems.

That said, from what I've seen over the past 10 years or so, Perl hasn't had much of a presence in areas where a lot of computer work in tech is being done. For example, in cloud computing, or scientific computing, or machine learning, or web frameworks. Please don't read this to mean that Perl couldn't be or isn't being used in these cases or wouldn't be a better fit. (As an aside, I think Perl missed out a lot while a large portion of the community was focused on Perl 6: there's only so much energy in a community, and that absorbed on Perl 6 wasn't focusing on evangelism. But that's not something I'm interested in litigating here.) Or that there isn't something a bit frustrating in seeing the wheel reinvented time and time again. And so many examples on the web use bash as a common denominator. This puts Perl further out of mind if it's not already part of your everyday workflow. And how many developers today have come of age without seeing Perl in their everyday environments?

Consider the current forum. What's the percentage of front-page posts that are about Perl or tools where Perl is a part of the tool chain? It would be understandable for the people who frequent HN to not view Perl as their go-to. I don't consider it uncivil for people to neglect to mention some other language when it's not something they'd actually think of reaching for. It seems the solution would be to share examples of where Perl provides advantages, both in the comments here and in submissions to HN.

[Too]

Well said, perl might be the theoretically best match in specifically this problem domain but the thing is there are only so many programming languages one can learn.

If i had to choose only one of ruby/python or perl i would choose the former and it would be able to cover my base both as glue-code and for more programs. Perl would maybe make the glue code a bit easier but instead i would be much less employable and have a much harder time finding other people who can read the glue. I'm not qualified to have an opinion on perls capabilities for other programs but i'm sure there are valid reasons most people prefer other alternatives.