Why Perl?

Slide 3 of 29

Notes:

I’m sure other speakers are giving their reasons. These are some of mine:

If I had top give one reason: Fewer lines of code.

Higher level language => less code => less errors (Mythical Man Month)

=> Consider “A picture is worth a thousand words” - rich in powerful idioms (compact but not so terse as to be unreadable later - like APL) vs “Can’t see the wood for the trees” - in other languages like C.

“No limits” - often hard to do in other languages where much more care/effort id required

Exception handling - simplifies logic - less code - less errors

Rapid prototyping

Rapid response to change - simply less code to maintain

Many free reusable modules

Perl is an approriate language for a very wide range of tasks.

Learning Perl often avoids the need to learn one or more other tools.