> The general advice here seems to be “learn Perl while young”
I think what people are actually saying is: "Perl was great in certain regards, back when I could expect my colleagues to understand Perl, which incidentally was when I was young"
It may take many more likes to apply a regex in any other language - but if my colleagues know Python but not Perl, saving 10 minutes of coding will cost me 5 hours of training/coaching/debugging after the code has been 'maintained' by someone who doesn't know their $_ from their ->@*
I think what people are actually saying is: "Perl was great in certain regards, back when I could expect my colleagues to understand Perl, which incidentally was when I was young"
It may take many more likes to apply a regex in any other language - but if my colleagues know Python but not Perl, saving 10 minutes of coding will cost me 5 hours of training/coaching/debugging after the code has been 'maintained' by someone who doesn't know their $_ from their ->@*