Advice about who should use or not use Perl

From Learning Perl, 6th ed. (6):

If you're going to use a programming language for only a few minutes each week or month, you'd prefer one that is easier to learn, since you'll have forgotten nearly all of it from one use to the next.  Perl is for people who are programmers for at least twenty minutes a day, and probably most of that in Perl.

The highlights are mine.

I went to YAPC::NA 2011 and in my narrow slice of experience of the event and ancillary meetings (including Perl Mongers meetings), this quote from Learning Perl resonates with me.

Unfortunately (!), only jobs I've *applied* for would have me writing Perl everyday.  As it is, and has been for nearly a decade, as much as I've wanted Perl to be my job, it has been nearly none of it.  Thankfully, at least, my work now puts me back in front of actual code, so while it isn't Perl, it is something (Python and PHP).

• Schwartz, Randal L.; Foy, Brian D.; Phoenix, Tom. Learning Perl. 6th ed.

Trouble getting Net::SFTP installed on Windows and Mac

So, in the spirit of proving that Perl is not a *nix programming language, I have been banging my head against the wall for days trying to get Net::SFTP installed on a variety of non-*nix platforms: Windows 7 + Strawberry Perl, Windows 7 + Cygwin, Mac OS 10.6. I run into countless dependency problems, some of which I was able to decipher and move through.

The latest is when I attempted to install Net::SFTP using perlbrew on my iMac at work. Math::GMP fails with "WARNING! No GMP libraries were detected!". Will look into that one and report back.



Okay, got GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) from here: http://www.gmplib.org/ . Trying "cpanm Net::SFTP" again. . . .

Installing Net::SSH::Perl failed on 03-packet.t test. (I should probably be putting this in CPAN Testers, but I have never done that before.)

At YAPC::NA::2011 in Asheville, NC!!!

Finally made it to the annual North American Perl conference! It was so close, I had to go. Drove to beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. Everything from Front Royal was scenic candy.

Looking forward to breakfast among the Perlers and genuflecting to Larry Wall at 10:25am tomorrow.

Status

1. Slowly getting through "Learning Perl".
2. Slowly getting through the Catalyst tutorial on CPAN.
3. Still getting the hang of Fink and Macports.
4. Figuring out how I'm going to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard in September.
5. Figuring out what to do next about my seemingly dead Lacie external hard drive.
6. Still procrastinating about putting my finances into Gnucash.
7. Still procrastinating about updating my Flickr.

It looks like using Gnucash in conjunction with Dropbox is a great way to keep your finances safe and available from remote locations.