I was thinking about matching it since I'm retired and my early and mid career was built on perl but I also feel a bit unqualified as I'm not really a great programmer or really understand deep problems like language design and compilers/interpreters.
I remember at a former company, we had a major migration away from Perl 12 years ago. The Perl code base was considered extremely ancient even back then.
I am working for a company maintaining an enterprise grade software system that is primarily driven by Perl 5 and Postgres. It generates about EUR 50 million in revenue every year.
To avoid creating new Perl code from scratch we created a REST API many years ok which new frontends and middlewares use instead of interacting with the core itself. That has been successful to some extent as we can have frontend teams coding in JS/TypeScript without them needing to interact with Perl. But re-writing the API‘s implementation is risky and the company has shied away from that.
Fixing API bugs still require to dive into a Perl system. However, I found it easier turning Python or JS devs into Perl devs than into DB engineers. So, usually, the DB subsystem bears the greater risk and requires more expensive personnel.
Perl is still what I reach for when I have a regex heavy task. At my job there's a near 50/50 split between python and perl scripts. I've re-written some of the perl used for general sysadmin tasks in python too, but I haven't seen enough benefit to justify doing more. It works. Plus, in my opinion, perl is more fun to write.
Yes. I do. Just in case anyone doesn't know Perl has been in active development and has been adding new features the entire time. It was never 'dead'. This is Perl's new OO interface that was recently added as a stable feature in 5.40:
Generally only places that have a large amount of existing Perl and Perl developers. It’s a fine language with a strong ecosystem but even most Perl shops have a second backend language these days. I would happily use it again, but the only compelling reason to write new stuff in Perl is if most of your existing stuff is.
The TIOBE index says Perl is currently the #11 most popular programming language (up from #30 a year ago). ref: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
Now, I don't actually believe this, because that puts Perl way ahead of Rust (currently at #18). So the big thing I'm taking away from this little research post is that I no longer trust the Tiobe index. Too bad - it felt pretty reliable for a long time.
Even though Varnish may not be in fashion any more, there were many companies happily using it for free and still demanding security updates.
I like their transparency about who actually supports them, and what the whole community gets for it. I wish other projects would do that, if for no other reason than to make it obvious that FOSS isn't just something that happens.
Been using proxmox for a home lab and I still can't believe how much value they provide for free.
I use it with Cursor and create vm templates and clone them with a proxmox MCP server I've been adding features to and it's been incredibly satisfying to just prompt "create template from vm 552 and clone a full VM with it".
I use it for DevOps at work and it’s just wonderful. The data center features alone are worth the license fees .. but what I like most of all is how easy it makes managing ZFS pools.
I am sure we are all grateful for Proxmox's generous donation; but if €10k is newsworthy for a Foundation with Perl's historic profile, I would be very worried.
Shouldn't their donation be weighed against the revenues they enjoy using the Foundation's labors? Is Proxmox enjoying particularly strong revenues, and doesn't their product involve much more than what Perl provides? I think the donation is pretty fair. Their success certainly owes more to things beyond Perl itself.
Or, be inspired that it proves there's business value in supporting the foundation? They wouldn't spend thousands of euros if they thought it was going down the drain.
Fundraising is hard. There's a longer history around it that I don't have the space to fully explore here, but the quick version is that I'm currently looking for more sponsors in this 10k range rather than having to rely on 100k donations from very large orgs.
Some companies immediately understand the value of this kind of support. Getting that news out will hopefully allow me to find more orgs who can/will donate in this range.
So, if anyone has any leads, please do contact me: olaf@perlfoundation.org If you take a close look at your stack, you'll probably find Perl in there somewhere.
Unpopular opinion that's gonna get downvoted/flagged soon based on my experience here: That just shows you how broke EU tech companies are that even 10k is newsworthy for them.
For context, I only worked for average (not big-tech/unicorns) EU/French/Dutch/German tech companies my whole life and I was shocked to see how much more, the average US tech companies spend on frivolities(forget the wages) than the European companies I worked at.
From what I saw, for US tech companies big or small, buying fully decked MacBooks and Herman Miler chairs for their SW devs was the norm, while I only saw the discount bin chairs and base spec HP/Dell/Lenovo laptops wherever I worked here.
Even where I work now, SW engineers get the same crappy HP notebooks that HR uses to read emails, since beancounters love fleets of the same cheap laptops for everyone, so my manager needs to jump through hoops for the beancounters to let him order more powerful notebooks for the SW engineers in his team, cause ya' know, Docker and VMs eat more resources than Outlook and Excel. This is relatively unheard of for US SW engineers where little expense is spared on equipment.
They even reduced costs related to facility management like AC runtime and cleaning services, so trash bins are emptied twice a week instead of daily, leading to some funny office aromas in summer, if you catch my drift. And of course, they blame Putin for this.
I always naively assumed (mostly due to anti-US propaganda we get here in EU) that due to how expensive US labor and healthcare is, it would be the opposite that US companies would have to cost cut to the bone, but no, despite that, US companies still have way more money to spend than European ones. Crazy.
My explanation is, European companies are just run the same way EU governments are run, on austerity and cost cutting, so instead of trying to make money by innovating and investing and splurging to get the best of everything, they instead try to increase the profits by cutting all possible costs from purchasing to labors' wages and offshoring, since I assume that's also what's taught in European MBA schools.
we live in a world where it's easier to burn $10M for a repackaged chatgpt than to have someone wire $10k for a core infrastructure project. sad reality, but reality still.
if you're motivated to do OSS work, the best bet is to figure out how to take VC money to do that and don't end up on some blacklist.
Have you every counted how many old buildings that, if replaced/redesigned/rebuilt, would be both 100x more useful and worth 10x more you see in any large city's center?
People are going to HATE me for this, but I genuinely think: This feels like beating a dead horse...
I had my Perl phase. I even wrote the first piece of code for my employer in Perl. Well, it was a CGI script, so that was kind of natural back then.
But really, since all the hollow Perl6 stuff I've seen, I've never really read or heard anything about the language in the past, what, 10 to 15 years?
There are tons of languages out there, all with their own merits. But everything beyond Perl5 felt like someone was trying to piggyback on a legacy. If you invent a new language, thats fine, call it foobar and move on. But pretending to be the successor to Perl feels like a marketing stunt by now...
Perl? Wow. I'm a big fan of perl, but I gotta say I thought it was dead. Despite, the dynamic features of the language, I feel like it's much mote secure and mature than other modern convenience languages like JS/TS and Python. It certainly is much faster in general.
Most management has no idea of the importance of the open source building blocks that their business rests upon. Similarly they cannot begin to conceive of the benefits of making a donation. Probably the most effective thing you could do is to somehow attempt to copy the "greenwashing" effect of companies being environmentally responsible, and having an environmental section to their annual reports. "The health of the open source ecosystem is essential to sustainable research, development, and operations at ACME Corp. This year we have sponsored the following...for our current and future benefit".
39 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 71.1 ms ] threadI remember at a former company, we had a major migration away from Perl 12 years ago. The Perl code base was considered extremely ancient even back then.
To avoid creating new Perl code from scratch we created a REST API many years ok which new frontends and middlewares use instead of interacting with the core itself. That has been successful to some extent as we can have frontend teams coding in JS/TypeScript without them needing to interact with Perl. But re-writing the API‘s implementation is risky and the company has shied away from that.
Fixing API bugs still require to dive into a Perl system. However, I found it easier turning Python or JS devs into Perl devs than into DB engineers. So, usually, the DB subsystem bears the greater risk and requires more expensive personnel.
https://github.com/Perl-Apollo/Corinna
Now, I don't actually believe this, because that puts Perl way ahead of Rust (currently at #18). So the big thing I'm taking away from this little research post is that I no longer trust the Tiobe index. Too bad - it felt pretty reliable for a long time.
I like their transparency about who actually supports them, and what the whole community gets for it. I wish other projects would do that, if for no other reason than to make it obvious that FOSS isn't just something that happens.
https://phk.freebsd.dk/VML/2025/
I use it with Cursor and create vm templates and clone them with a proxmox MCP server I've been adding features to and it's been incredibly satisfying to just prompt "create template from vm 552 and clone a full VM with it".
https://github.com/agentify-sh/cursor-proxmox-mcp
Some companies immediately understand the value of this kind of support. Getting that news out will hopefully allow me to find more orgs who can/will donate in this range.
So, if anyone has any leads, please do contact me: olaf@perlfoundation.org If you take a close look at your stack, you'll probably find Perl in there somewhere.
Unpopular opinion that's gonna get downvoted/flagged soon based on my experience here: That just shows you how broke EU tech companies are that even 10k is newsworthy for them.
For context, I only worked for average (not big-tech/unicorns) EU/French/Dutch/German tech companies my whole life and I was shocked to see how much more, the average US tech companies spend on frivolities(forget the wages) than the European companies I worked at.
From what I saw, for US tech companies big or small, buying fully decked MacBooks and Herman Miler chairs for their SW devs was the norm, while I only saw the discount bin chairs and base spec HP/Dell/Lenovo laptops wherever I worked here.
Even where I work now, SW engineers get the same crappy HP notebooks that HR uses to read emails, since beancounters love fleets of the same cheap laptops for everyone, so my manager needs to jump through hoops for the beancounters to let him order more powerful notebooks for the SW engineers in his team, cause ya' know, Docker and VMs eat more resources than Outlook and Excel. This is relatively unheard of for US SW engineers where little expense is spared on equipment.
They even reduced costs related to facility management like AC runtime and cleaning services, so trash bins are emptied twice a week instead of daily, leading to some funny office aromas in summer, if you catch my drift. And of course, they blame Putin for this.
I always naively assumed (mostly due to anti-US propaganda we get here in EU) that due to how expensive US labor and healthcare is, it would be the opposite that US companies would have to cost cut to the bone, but no, despite that, US companies still have way more money to spend than European ones. Crazy.
My explanation is, European companies are just run the same way EU governments are run, on austerity and cost cutting, so instead of trying to make money by innovating and investing and splurging to get the best of everything, they instead try to increase the profits by cutting all possible costs from purchasing to labors' wages and offshoring, since I assume that's also what's taught in European MBA schools.
if you're motivated to do OSS work, the best bet is to figure out how to take VC money to do that and don't end up on some blacklist.
I had my Perl phase. I even wrote the first piece of code for my employer in Perl. Well, it was a CGI script, so that was kind of natural back then.
But really, since all the hollow Perl6 stuff I've seen, I've never really read or heard anything about the language in the past, what, 10 to 15 years?
There are tons of languages out there, all with their own merits. But everything beyond Perl5 felt like someone was trying to piggyback on a legacy. If you invent a new language, thats fine, call it foobar and move on. But pretending to be the successor to Perl feels like a marketing stunt by now...
Less than a month of compensation at FAANG is newsworhty.