I'd be genuinely interested in reasons why I should learn Perl? I've been hacking away at some Perl interfaces lately but finding it difficult. It seems like a big language (I'm reading Perl Programming, which is certainly a big book). So rather than just hacking away, is there a good reason I should learn the language properly and push through "Perl Programming" or say learning Ruby, Python or golang really well. Wi…
Perl 5 is handy, putting oft-used tools within arms reach. There are a lot of useful and mature Perl 5 modules available (at CPAN). The language has some warts you'll hear folks complain about. Perl 5 is considered a power tool for GNU/Linux & unix admins. Perl 5 infrastructure is great. Community support is great. The docs are great. For small scripts that involve text manipulation (with regexes) and working with the OS and with other scripts, it's very tough to beat Perl 5. The Perl 5 goals appear to me to be: be handy (sometimes providing more than one way to do it), be useful (bending the rules sometimes is ok, but try not to wreck up the place), and try to do what I mean.
Python is easy to pick up, is pretty uniform, and has a nice repl. You'll often find your Python code working correctly the first time you type it. You should be able to learn the language itself in a very short amount of time. The Python goals appear to me to be: be easy to learn, be mostly uniform. For more, open a repl and type `import this`.
The Perl 5, Python, and Ruby communities are somewhat different from eachother.
> Will Perl remain relevant in 15 years time?
Can't answer that, but I don't think Perl 5 is going anywhere for a while. Too much stuff runs on Perl 5.