UVTC's Blog

A Perl Vitality Indicator

2012-08-13

Update: Shortly after posting this, all three of the sites listed below were updated to have syntax highlighting for their code snippets! Nice!

A topic that sometimes comes up in Perl 5 circles is that, even though

the language is doing well,

the user community is active, and

the CPAN is as useful and maintained as ever,

you still hear a handful of people claiming that Perl 5 is in decline, or acting derisive if you choose Perl 5 over, say, Python or Ruby for a new project.

Perlers wonder why this is.

I think I see one part of the problem.

Just now I had a brief look at a few recent Perl-related blog posts and articles. Here are a few links:

I noticed a pattern. Something obvious that they all have in common. Something that jumps out at the reader and warns, “seems a bit old-fashioned, no?”.

I’m guessing that the content of those articles is likely of high quality (I haven’t read them yet). But they’re all missing one essential thing … one critical hint to the reader that would right away suggest, “well, this looks modern and with-it”.

None of them have syntax highlighting of the code snippets.

Syntax highlighting in blog posts, articles, pastebins, etc., has become pervasive. Standard. If I see an article with code in it, and the code is not syntax-highlighted, it makes me wonder:

Is something broken?

Is this a very old blog post or article?

Is the blogging or doc-prep software out-of-date?

Did the author forget to tag the code snippet in some way?

The situation strikes me as very odd: Why wouldn’t one of the most doggedly resourceful hacker communities on Earth — who particularly want Perl 5 to be perceived as modern and active — why wouldn’t they insist upon using syntax highlighting in the very documents that many folks will first encounter when looking into “what’s new” with the language?