In my last blog post, I posted a graph showing that out of 135 companies at a recent Silicon MilkRoundabout recruitment event, only one said that they were using Perl. That has led to some interesting discussions that I’d like to address here.

I should make it clear that I wasn’t presenting my graph as evidence that Perl is dead. Of course you can’t leap to conclusions like that from what I learned at one recruitment event. I do, however, think that the situation is pretty grim.

But firstly, a few points that people made to me in response to my post.

We know that Perl isn’t used in start-ups

Yes. I think we do know that. But I don’t think we’re as worried about that as we should be. Imagine if that job fair was held fifteen years ago. Or twenty years ago. Perl used to be the language of choice for internet start-ups. What happened to change that? (I have some theories that I’ll cover in another blog post) Can this trend be reversed? (Honestly, I don’t think so – but I’m open to arguments to the contrary)

Every programmer I know uses Perl in some way

I think this might have been true fifteen years ago, but it hasn’t been the case for some time. If it’s really true that all programmers that you know still use Perl, then I think you only know a really bizarre cross-section of programmers.

All companies use Perl, but the HR department or management often don’t know

This is similar to the last point. And, again, I think it’s something that used to be true and hasn’t really been true this millennium. But there’s also the idea of Perl being the programmers “secret weapon” that the suits don’t know about. Even if it’s true (and I don’t think it is), then going underground like that is likely to be harmful to Perl’s popularity in the long term.

I think we should stop fooling ourselves here. Perl usage has been declining for over a decade. To a first level of of approximation, Perl is already a dead language.

Of course, The Perl community has spent a lot of the last few years actively denying that. I’ve been responsible for some of that drum-beating myself. But we need to accept that it’s true. For most people outside of the Perl bubble, Perl is a language that they last considered using back in the last millennium.

So, if Perl is dead, why has everyone spent the last five years demonstrating that this isn’t the case? Have they been lying to us? No, I don’t think they have. I just think that they have been looking at the wrong measures of success. Let’s look at some of the arguments I’ve seen.

CPAN is growing faster than ever

We have regular releases of Perl

Some great new features have been added to Perl

These all essentially boil down to the same argument – “Perl isn’t dead because some part of Perl (or its ecosystem) is improving”. I can’t argue with any of those facts, but do they really say anything useful about the long-term viability of the language. It’s great that Perl is constantly improving, but unless the people who are currently ignoring Perl can be persuaded to investigate these improvements, then they do little or nothing to stop Perl’s decline.

Moose might be the most powerful object system in the world. DBIx::Class might be the most flexible ORM available. Projects like these are great. But they don’t seem to be doing much to bring new people to Perl.

There are more YAPCs and Perl Workshops every year

Perl Mongers groups are starting all the time

We get dozens of people to our meetings every month

These arguments all boil down to “the Perl community is growing”. Again, I can’t argue with those facts (well, to be honest, I think the rate of Perl Monger group creation has slowed over the last ten years) but, again, I don’t think they prove what their proponents think they prove.

There is a difference between the Perl community and Perl programmers. Everywhere that I work, I find people who I already know from the community. But I always find far more people who I don’t know because they aren’t at all engaged with the Perl community. And I think it’s that large, untapped, number of non-community Perl programmers who make up the increased numbers of people attending meetings or conferences. This means that we are getting better at bringing our colleagues along to meetings. It doesn’t mean that more people are using Perl.

The number of Perl jobs is rising

Our company can never find enough Perl programmers

We just started a major new project using Perl

Most of the companies who use Perl continue to use Perl. That’s not really news. And some of those companies have grown really big and therefore need lots of Perl programmers to maintain and enhance their Perl programs. And that’s great. But it’s not really evidence of a grow in Perl usage.

Not all the companies who have historically used Perl continue to do so. Over the last five years I know of at least four big Perl-using companies in London who have started to move away from it for new development.

And one reason why people are always looking for Perl programmers is because many programmers have chosen to move away from Perl. I know plenty of people who were regulars at London Perl Mongers meetings ten to fifteen years ago but who haven’t written a line of Perl for over five years. This means, of course, that there is more work to go round those of us who are left. I could probably go through to my retirement maintaining existing Perl codebases. Those of you who are younger than me might not be so lucky.

So, to summarise, people who say that Perl is thriving point to three things – technical advances in Perl, the vibrant Perl community and the number of unfilled Perl jobs that always seem to be around. All of these things are great and are, of course, necessary for a living and growing language.

But they aren’t sufficient. You also need people outside of the community to take notice. And that’s not happening.

Ask yourself three questions.

When did you last read a book on general programming techniques that contained examples written in Perl? When did you last read documentation for a web site’s API that included examples written in Perl? When did you last hear of a company using Perl that you didn’t previously know about?

This is why I published that graph a couple of weeks ago. Looking at that data, it really hit home to me just how badly we’re doing.

I have a couple of theories about why most of the world started ignoring Perl. I’ll get to those in my next blog posts. But, annoyingly, I don’t have any good ideas about how we might reverse the situation.

To be honest, currently my best advice (and the course I’ll be taking) is “brush up your Javascript”.