Why is perl losing its touch? (opens in new tab)

I think it's better to flip the question around:

I make my living writing single-page web apps in JavaScript. These days, everything I do, even on the server, is in JavaScript.

What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

This one page isn't a good indicator of a language's popularity. It probably includes results referencing Monty Python, as indicated by the news article headlines, or the animal python.

The TIOBE index might be a better indicator of programming popularity using internet search results:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

but that's still not perfect. You could also look at the number of job postings on sites like Indeed asking for Perl experience.

It's fairly obvious that the python programming language results are fairly drowned out by the Monty Python and snake results, as illustrated by all the news headlines shown for python, and by related topics and queries.

That's not to say that the trend shown is entirely incorrect, just that it would be mostly coincidental to the data shown here.

I compared perl and JavaScript:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Perl%2C%20JavaScript&...

And they both have a similar decline.

Death by a thousand cuts...PHP cut it off at the knees because it was trivialy easy to do web apps on a shared host; Perl hosting was far harder. Ruby came on the scene, and stepped in as a spiritual successor to Perl. Perl 6's infinite development cycle sapped the life out of the community. All of which led to fewer modules being added to, or updated on, CPAN. Fewer fresh modules drove more use to other languages that did have the fresh modules

I.e. a really nasty downward spiral that leaves perl occupying the same space as COBOL and FORTAN - a language used in massive legacy systems, but rarely used in new systems unless implemented by ancient wizards.

One the upside, pretty soon Perl wizards will be able to charge the same rates as COBOL & FORTRAN wizards...

Perl always will be my favorite language. Its absolutely a joy to write. What's interesting to me is that all the things that people like about JavaScript, Perl had first, and I think better (closures, first class functions).

The criticisms that people had about Perl, such as that it langrage like line noise was unfortunate. Being able to tell whether something was a scalar, array, or hash by the character that preceded it was helpful.

Being able to slap a set of braces around code to create a closure was also much better than needing to do the same in a function like JavaScript.

Perl formed some much new ground. CPAN was the predecessor of npm, etc.

I'm just glad to be able to write functional code again through JavaScript, just like when I wrote Perl. I don't miss writing Java (or any static typed object oriented language) at all, and hope I never will again. I just hope that ES6 doesn't turn JavaScript engineers into object oriented programmers.

I'm not sure you are comparing apples to apples here. I would instead consider a graph like this one: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05zrn%2C%20%2F...

Though I am not sure how Google categorizes search terms intro specific things like a programming language versus a python snake, etc. I wasn't offered a Python language selector so I changed it to Java and added Go for fun.

Because everything perl can do python can do better? Okay that is a though claim but perl and python fit about the same area - a dynamically typed scripting language that can take over when that shell script gets too big and all the way up to a full-blown app or website, but you are not going to win any prizes for speed - but python doesn't have all the weird crap that goes along with perl (what exactly does $#% mean again?) and it has everything else.

Perl was a great language in its day but I just don't see a case where are new programmer is better of starting a new project in perl rather than python.

Perl was a victim of its own success.

Perl is one of the few languages associated with the web that was really pre-web. It's because of Perl's inspiration that we have PHP and Python. So while the language evolved, it was never web centric at heart.

Another great thing about Perl was in the early days of the web it appealed to both real coders and script kiddies. But as time went on the script kiddies tended to move on to languages like PHP, so only the pros are really left.

The last issue with Perl was that it was never a favorite of computer science programs, so it was always a bit of a hackers language at heart. So there is a wonderful community around Perl, but it makes it very hard if you run a shop to find kids out of school who know the language vs. Java back in the day (and other languages today).

But I know a few coders who still really love Perl in hearts, so while the popularity hasn't grown I would say the language does have a very hard core dedicated following.

Any idea on the high interest in Luxembourg?

Due to the financial industry?

I think a better indicator would be "Perl tutorial", since that might tell you how many new people are joining.

It's because perl guys doesn't need to google for answers after 10 years.

I'm always at a loss as to why people take such delight in the real or perceived decline of Perl.

Perl and Python are similar, excellent programming languages, and I don't imagine Larry and Guido argue like children about it when they meet at conferences.

I'll just quote Bjarne Stroustrop: There are two kinds of programming languages. The one's people complain about, and the one's people do not use.

There's a clear contender: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=perl%2C%20python%2C%2...

I also strongly recommend looking at the headlines marked on the graph.

The question assumes that the relevant forces weren't in motion much earlier (they were, it just takes time for the basic changes to show up clearly in things like this search)

Relevant: Trend analysis at the shallow end of the pool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9099675

More interesting question is why the JavaScript curve is decaying at the same rate as Perl (add it to the graph and see).

i totally understand that such key words are polluted with searches like Monty Python, but the trend does seem to change much even if we apply more restricted key words, as already pointed out by many other replies before. in the end it's really just a matter of habit using what programming language to do what, it's still, however, interesting to see how popularity of one language come and go.