Programmers are not so humble anymore.

Perl was once Anywhere. Or at least that’s how it felt. Around the turn of the millennium it seemed almost every website was built behind this scripting language. It processed a large amount of text – the machine for doing this powerfully was part of the language – and it was also used in bioinformatics, manging, and stirring via genetic data. Based on One listCompanies using Perl have broadly ranged from Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Deutsche Bank, Akamai, Citibank, Comcast, Morgan Stanley and Mozilla. Many craigslists were programmed in Perl.

Even with its peak use, Perl’s popularity has always been a bit surprising. Perl is an undeniably messy language. It is often called “internet duct tape” and programmers joke that it is “.Write-only“Language: You write in it, but rarely read it (at least successfully).

Perl has the fusion mashup nature that serves its motto. “There is one or more ways to do that.” Just as there are synonyms in English, Perl has different approaches to writing the same thing. This is a common feature of programming languages to some extent, but Perl seems to want to knock on his head with it. For example, there are multiple ways to create a conditional statement, from using traditional “if” to “exclusion.” Write an IF statement backwards on a single line. Even a three-part operator with question marks and colons. I have a clear memory of writing code in Perl one day in the early 2000s. The next day, I didn’t understand what I wrote.

However, this messiness and baroque structure are actually intentional and part of the broader philosophy underlying Perl. Language creator Larry Wall is trained in linguistics, and his intention was to become a missionary with his wife. I’m involved in rare languages. Wall took another pass and ended up in a completely hugging coding. But his deep thoughts about how language works never left him.

Wall’s perspective is that his obsession with language purity has been overestimated. English has words from French, Greek, German, and even the Akkadians, betray its winding history and multifaceted origins. We split the infinitives and hang the modifiers. We have puns that we don’t intend and puns that aren’t. So, what’s a bit strange when it comes to how to write an IF statement? The wall saw evolution as part of the language development process. Here, there is an organic process going on, and the final product does not need to be ordered. Therefore, a broad and non-judgmental approach to language construction is essential, whether it is a language designed to write scripts or sonnets.

Perl has “multiple ways” to do things, and English has many styles and flexible properties. This is a property that can include everything from cooking recipes to haiku to shopping lists. That’s really a sign of something open-ended. As Wall once said: “I firmly believe that language should be… an amoral art medium.” If Perl has a comprehensive vision or dogma, it’s simply the fact that you should probably not program your dogma at all.

To be clear, I was not a deep user of Perl. Its syntax and messiness overwhelmed its power for me, when I was introduced to an ordered structure PythonI went on to that language, but never looked back. This may be a hint as to why language actually lost its luster. Even in 1998, during its heyday, there was a suggestion that Perl’s bloating could lead to a desire to jump “clean.” Whatever the reason, Perl is not as popular as it once was.