The video below is Perl’s development history since Larry Wall and a small team started out in January 1988. It’s visualized using gource. Notice how dev activity has continued to increase all the way to 2010.

Perl is a powerful language. It’s also fast and everything you need has already been implemented, debugged, refactored, reimplemented and made rock solid. If you ever have a problem, it’s already been solved by someone else. When I was in my 20’s I was a big fan of the new-new thing. Now, as a startup owner taking strategic risks and trying to reduce risks in other areas of the business, I love Perl because I know it will do right by me and I deploy code knowing I’m not betting on a language that might one day grow up to be what Perl already is.

Watch the video in 720 hidef on full screen (Youtube link) to see all the labels. It’s awesome realizing how much work and evolution has gone into some of the core libs that I use.