I have been writing software "professionally" since around 1980 and first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked it.   Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it.  As a utility language, and one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Kyle Banerjee
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:28 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
> 
> BTW, I think perl gets the short shrift as a utility language. People
> hate it because it's ugly, but for data manipulation and analysis, it's
> very practical.