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If you want to stick with perl, I would suggest to read chromatic's Modern Perl book.

http://onyxneon.com/books/mode...

I can't relate to any of those things you list in the third paragraph.

And/Or precedence is well-defined across multiple programming languages, and there really aren't that many situations where you actually need to mix both in a single if statement. (Besides, you're missing parentheses in your example there.) Sigils have simple, well-defined rules that mostly relate to how you want to access the data and whether you're accessing a single item or multiple -- it relates to the scalar/list context concept Perl has. The compile phase seems comparable in time to that of other interpreted languages. The symbol table is the symbol table and it doesn't exactly get corrupted unless you do something to it, so I'd appreciate a more concrete example. DBIx is a namespace meant to hold extension modules for DBI (the database connector); it's ridiculous to criticise a namespace with dozens of unrelated modules for christ's sakes.

But I'm glad that the mods found your mostly-fictional rant worthy. Do read Modern Perl to get a nice, in-depth description of the language. (It's available for free!) You seem to have more than a few holes in your knowledge; perhaps it can fill them.

The default assumption of these automated checkers is that anything shared is infringing.

I've run into this myself. While I give away my book Modern Perl free in electronic forms, my publisher charges a nominal fee for the Kindle version to cover expenses. I made some changes recently to fix some formatting problems and edit out a couple of typos. After I uploaded a new version, the Kindle copyright police declined the update (to a book they'd already allowed in their store) because they thought it was available online for free elsewhere.

I understand that no one wants a million copies of Wikipedia articles clogging up book stores, but it would be nice if there were a way to say "Yes, the contents of this book are available under a Creative Commons license and I have the right to distribute it."

(My publisher has the same right to distribute the printed copy, and Amazon is very happy to sell that version.)

Chromatic's Modern Perl book is also available as a free download. It's useful for Perl programmers who want to know what's new in the Perl world in the last several years.

I couldn't possibly have listed all the languages and technologies I have done work with. But here's a sample.... BASIC, C, Pascal, Ada, COBOL, Perl, CGI, vbscript/asp, scripting (*ux shells mostly), VB, most recently PHP. I am only interested in general purpose work, utilities, hell I don't even know yet exactly where I will go with this.

I'm sure you'll enjoy checking out Python and Ruby etc., as suggested elsewhere in these comments, but with that background I'd also suggest taking a fresh look at Perl. Not the ugly stuff bodged together from fragments of 'Matt's scripts' linked with carelessly-constructed chunks of Perl 4-style code that was popular in the 90s, nor the permanently experimental Perl 6, but Perl 5 written in a modern, elegant style (no, really!) with decent coding standards and full use of current language features:

http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/
http://perl-tutorial.org/

haven't used any new features since about perl 3

Seriously? Just read the (free) Modern Perl book sometime. You're bound to pick up lots of useful ideas. The Perl community has moved on a great deal since the 90's, you know.

I just wish Perl 5 had a good OO system.

Try Moose.

I think one has to be programming Perl for 40+ hours a week, in order for their mind to stay fresh enough in Perl...

I think you have to understand the two underlying philosophical notions of Perl and know how to use the documentation to use it effectively. The book Modern Perl (I wrote it; electronic versions are free) explain those straightaway.

You can write 'Modern Perl' in the sense used here without switching to an entirely different language:

http://www.onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/index.html

"I was just going to say that back in about 2001 someone gave me advice not to learn Perl 5 because a Perl 6 release was imminent."

It's a shame that this 'Osborne effect' has hung over Perl for the last decade. I wonder how Perl 5 would now be perceived if Perl 6 had been given a different name and announced as a research project into language development, rather than the next version of Perl? With better PR, Perl 5.10 could easily have been 'Perl 6'.

All this tends to obscure the quet evolution of Perl 5 programming into what 'chromatic' and others are calling 'Modern Perl', using an idiomatic style that takes full advantage of recent language features (some borrowed from Perl 6) and CPAN to write efficient and maintainable code:

http://www.modernperlbooks.com/
http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/

As always, a lot of the most active development is happening outside the core language. Anyone interested in some of the directions Perl 5 is going in today ought to check out projects like these:

http://www.iinteractive.com/moose/
http://plackperl.org/
http://www.catalystframework.org/
http://mojolicio.us/

I was never sure if the way I implemented was the right way.

The free book Modern Perl explains how to use Perl 5 in an effective and maintainable fashion.

I do something similar with the book Modern Perl. Electronic versions are free and freely redistributable. Download numbers are at least 10 or 20 times the number of sales of the printed version, but I've made more in royalties than I'd ever see from a so-called "traditional" publisher, as I earn at least eight times as much per copy sold than I would.

If you can find a reputable publisher who won't give you the awful 10-15% of wholesale, or if you can find a credible editor and copyeditor to look over your work, self-publishing or small-press publishing is a much, much better way to make money writing books, even if you give away electronic versions.

I've lost more money to publishers than I have to copyright infringement.

(My current publisher and I give away the electronic versions of Modern Perl: the book for free.)

I've just done this with the book Modern Perl. Rather than punishing paying customers with DRM or trying to track down and stop copyright infringement, my publisher gives away electronic versions for free and asks readers to spread them to other people, to write reviews, and to consider donating a reasonable value for the information.

So far I've earned more money more quickly than I would have with the traditional publishing model.

And this works fine for selfpublishing or if you're hugely famous. But theres an entire lobby of MPAA, RIAA and various book publishers who want s a piece of the cake, and if theres' only one slice available, then how can they afford to pay the author ? I totally agree that pretty much any business model is better than having a publicist steal majority of your income and running around suing Your fans over licensing fees and piracy. But that's the current business model. It will hopefully evolve soon. Unlimited streaming for a fixed amount of cash is a novel approach they're trying here in my country. And it's working pretty decently so far. But like in Russia, someone will start a fight over who gets how much, because streaming and purchasing is not he same thing etc. Always publisher vs. artist. Sad really.

I've just done this with the book Modern Perl. Rather than punishing paying customers with DRM or trying to track down and stop copyright infringement, my publisher gives away electronic versions for free and asks readers to spread them to other people, to write reviews, and to consider donating a reasonable value for the information.

So far I've earned more money more quickly than I would have with the traditional publishing model.

How about no visibly defined function parameters...

That's a fair point until you use a module such as signatures or Method::Signatures.

object oriented features are stuck on with duct tape

Perl 5's default object system is basically Python's object system. Everything Python programmers complain about (explicit self) and everything Python programmers haven't figured out yet (the conflation of namespace and class with no distinguishing between function and method makes for fragile classes) is a misfeature shared between the two languages. Python offers little additional value there, and it suffers greatly when compared to Moose.

you have to have a deep understanding of the language to understand what's really going on when someone assigns between variables that have different [sigils]

You only have to be able to understand subject/verb agreement in a spoken language (and you don't even have to know the term "subject/verb agreement"). That's one of the first things the book Modern Perl explains. (You can download it for free if you like.)

huge numbers of built-in magic 2-character variable names that you can't remember without a cheat sheet.

I've written a lot of Perl 5 over many years, and I can think of two or three I ever use. I could get that down to one.

Two substantial criticisms are "reference syntax is ugly", which is true and "most tutorials explain the language poorly", which is why I wrote what I believe to be a better book.

Larry and Damian have worked on outlines and have proposed various timelines for Programming Perl 6, but I don't know its current status. My company, Onyx Neon, has other Perl 6 books in process.

I've had several technical books published. The process has left me so dissatisfied I'm unlikely to work with a so-called traditional publisher ever again -- certainly not with a standard contract. See The Value of a Publisher for some thoughts representing what you give up to work with such a contract.

I believe that any publisher that refuses to pay you 25% royalties on the wholesale price is not worth your time.

So self-publish. Nothing's stopping you.

Indeed; I co-own an independent publishing company, and am actively working on two books right now.

18 months work for two authors seems like a lot for a single book - I'll have to assume that's part time.

Between the two of us, it was about eighteen months of full-time work. It was a long, detailed book that required a lot of research. Not all books are like that -- I can write an average-sized novel in six months.

Tech book publishers know that what they provide of value is access to a large reservoir of knowledge.

That doesn't mean they treat authors any better than other types of publishers. Most publishers severly undervalue their authors -- there's no way that the publisher provided seven times the value to my most recent few books than I did. (If they took on seven times more risk than I did, that's not my problem. That's their broken business model.)

There is a fear in the publishing industry that authors could cut them out and sell directly to the readers.

Good. Publishers have been cheating authors for years.

Do you think you might try to do it on your own? Selling online, demand printing, etc?

I helped set up Onyx Neon Press for that purpose; it seems like a sustainable small business model.