The article "addresses Perl's perceived problems" more then it tries to find what the real problems of Perl are.<p>So here's my take on it:<p>1. Syntax. And how it's almost impossible to change it after a certain level of language-adoption. Perl coders knew it needed to be radically changed, understood how that was impossible, and moved on.<p>2. As a result of 1: the shrinking community. It is a clear red flag, no-one wants to start a project in based on (soon to be) legacy technology.<p>3. The existence of very suitable languages for Perl-refugees. When Perl ruled the web it was pretty much the only open source, web-focussed, runtime-typed language with a package manager fully of goodies. But with Ruby, Python (, etc.) and their very active communities around, it became very easy to switch.<p>4. It missed academic backing. Having programmers "schooled" in a particular language seems to be important in this world. The winners in this area seem to be Java, C-Sharp, C++, C, Python and to some extend Haskell; Perl never managed to enter this league (and does not seem very fit).
> Is the difference between arrays and array references really necessary?<p>This is certainly a annoyance compared to e.g. Ruby. It's getting easier to just always use references [0], but I haven't been using Perl much for a few years and am not sure if this is still considered experimental.<p>[0] <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.20.0/pod/perl5140delta.pod#Syntactical_Enhancements" rel="nofollow">http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.20.0/pod/perl5140delta.p...</a>
I agree with most of what is here save for the Perl 5/6 issue. Perl 5 needs a name change of some kind or another (Since Perl 6 isn't going anywhere or changing its name). You can't really write it off as people not "understanding how version numbering works" when the common way it works is by incrementing the major number when a new version is out.
To put it bluntly: The next Perl release should be 6.0.<p>The existing perl6 projects can figure out their own branding, because it's clear they are no longer "successors" or replacements for Perl.
I've always found it funny how many of the people who decry Perl as being "line noise" will then go on to praise such languages as APL, J and K. I think it might be because of their more esoteric paradigms and the fact that they do not follow the formulaic Von Neumann architecture, making them good targets for people to assert how atypical they are, unlike those other Blub programmers.
> The current version of Perl (5.20.1 as I write this) is a lot different to the version that was current when Perl 6 was first announced (which was 5.6.0, I think)<p>Wasn't "Perl 6" just a tentative spinoff from "Perl 5.6", and didn't Perl programmers start unofficially refering to subsequent versions of Perl 5.x as "Perl x", i.e. Perl 5.7 as "Perl 7" and the latest version as "Perl 20" ? Better make official how Perl programmers are speaking anyway and call the next version Perl 21.0