[schmonz]

I recently spent 4.5 years at a big bank developing identity-management tools. They were written in Perl. The first thing I did was screw up in production: http://www.schmonz.com/2014/06/01/tdd-in-context-1-keeping-m...

So I started carefully making the code testable, then gradually adding tests and refactoring under them, and gradually adopting and taking advantage of Moose, shipping every month all the while. There was never a second screwup.

(Will big banks keep choosing Perl for new projects? Yes, for a long time. It's firmly entrenched. It didn't win, but it'll probably never lose either.)

Would I choose Perl for a new project? That depends. For programmers with taste, discernment, and discipline, Perl-the-language + Perl-the-CPAN can be incredibly and sustainably productive. For other programmers, it's enough rope to quickly cut off bloodflow to your foot, which you can then use Perl to amputate.

In other words, Perl is at the high end of the risk/reward curve. If I could mitigate the risk -- say, by convincing myself that I'll always be in a position to hire great programmers or nobody -- then I'd absolutely want the reward of developing a new system in Perl.