Once in a while someone comes up with a Perl is .... post, and there are always people who point out why their measurement is flawed and how everything is perfect. Yet there are people with mid-career crisis and then others who tell me this was a wake-up call for them and they start learning a more marketable language.
I had part of the following post in a draft for ages now, there is no particular reason to publish it now, but who knows, maybe some people will agree with me.
The numbers show that the market-share of Perl has been shrinking for ages, way below I‘d expect. (4% of the JavaScript+PHP+Python+Ruby+Perl market)
There are many reasons for that, let me just point out one that I think is critical.
It was the easiest tool around to do sysadmin work and to create dynamic web applications due to its features combining all the power of Unix and due to the availability of CGI.pm in the core.
It was Ubiquitous.
为什么在90年代，Perl如此盛行？
因为他是最简单易用的工具，去做系统管理工作，去创建动态Web应用程序，因为他和强大的Unix紧密的结合在一起，也因为CGI.pm的作为核心的可用性。
Perl在那时无处不在。
It was easier for a front-end web developer (HTML) to move from pure HTML to PHP, and a lot of the necessary tools were available without any additional installation. (e.g. access to MySQL)
Why is Python more and more preferred by people who just need to do some work on a Linux box? Even by system administrators?
Besides being easier to learn than Perl and besides the disgusting socialization of "Perl is bad" I think there is another very important issue.
The default Python distribution comes with a lot of modules in its standard library, that in Perl would require additional installation. Either from CPAN or from the package management system of the operating system.
I know, it is not very difficult to install from CPAN, but it is yet another obstacle, both technically and administratively. A beginner does not know what to install, how to install, and if they are allowed to install at all.
Python为何如此成功？
为什么Python被越来越多的人作为首选，他们仅仅需要在Linux里做一些工作？甚至系统管理员也把Python作为首选。People will go in the direction of least resistance..
So I think unless a future version of Perl will come with a lot of libraries built in, there won‘t be an easy way to convince people to pick Perl.
(Oh, and of course it is not the number of libraries what is important, but that they solve the problems people face.)
Having an up-to-date release of DWIM Perl both for Linux and Windows would be a good step in the direction, though I think the real solution would be if theStandard Perl, released by the Perl 5 Porters already included a much larger selection of modules.
世间有很多路，大家总会选择哪条最好走的！阻力最小的！
所以我认为：除非在未来版本的Perl中内置大量的库，没有一种更为简单的路，让人重新拾起Perl。尽管我认为真正的解决方案是 在标准Perl中，Perl5的便携发行版中已经包括了大量的精挑细选的模块。
原文请看：http://bbs.perlchina.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=71&page=1&extra=#pid338
Perl社区：http://bbs.perlchina.org/forum.php
PHP和Python如何侵占了Perl如此大的份额,布布扣,bubuko.com
原文：http://blog.csdn.net/g_r_c/article/details/21511911