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Fastmail Donates USD 10k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

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Re: Fastmail Donates USD 10k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#8
I started working in the 10's and I have never met a single developer who actively works with Perl.

Sometimes I wonder whether Perl left a huge code base behind, like COBOL did, but I suspect it didn't, mostly due to the fact that Perl is a dynamically typed language used mainly for web development and sysadmin scripting.

Perl unlike Java, which had no serious alternative in its niche, unfortunately has an uncertain future in my opinion. Not that Perl is going to disappear suddenly like coffee script, but as the old timers retire or pass away in the next decades, I can certainly see the language slowly "evaporating".

Re: Fastmail Donates USD 10k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#9
I’m aware of two large telecom companies that use Perl extensively, but in-house and internal services only. They don’t have anything “public” to point to.

I will say that the extensive backwards compatibility is a big reason why Perl remains; there’s no pressure to change or get rid of “old” programs when they just keep working year and year.

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