Perl: One of the Best Languages for Custom Web Development

Submitted by J. Timothy King on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 14:11

It may surprise you to learn that Perl is still one of the best languages for custom web development, especially for custom intranet and extranet apps.

Yes, PHP gets a lot of publicity, and there are numerous very well represented large-scale projects written in PHP, including WordPress, phpBB2, Drupal, and SugarCRM. When you think of “web development,” you may think of PHP. PHP is popular because it is relatively easy for the layman to grasp. But for custom development, from a software engineering perspective, PHP code is more difficult to design well and difficult to test.

So ignoring PHP (and every other programming language), what are the advantages of Perl?

You may be surprised to discover that Perl is well understood by millions of developers, can do what any capable language can do, has a vast library of ready-to-use solutions and frameworks, and most importantly, can be written to be easily maintained, given a competent developer following a style guide. Here’s why:

  • Perl is a mature, popular language, with broad technology support.
    • It’s mature, but still actively supported: The latest, Perl 5.10.0, was released in December 2007.
    • Because of its 20-something-year history (since December 18, 1987), Perl has proven staying power.
    • The Perl regular-expression syntax is the de-facto industry standard.
  • Perl offers speedy development because of CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), a large database of working, reusable modules.
    • According to Tim Bunce in July 2008 (see p. 16 of this PDF), CPAN contains over 15,000 package distributions, comprising 58,000 modules, maintained by over 6,700 authors, 25% of which have been updated in the last 4 months, and half updated in the last 17 months.
    • By my count, as of 10/13/2008, CPAN listed a total of 59.422 modules, including those included in the standard Perl distribution.
    • CPAN is a growing developer community, with number of module uploads still increasing exponentially.
  • Perl offers easy automated code testing, using the Test:: modules from CPAN.
    • In fact, Perl provided the genesis for the Test Anything Protocol over 20 years ago, now available on numerous development platforms.
  • Perl makes it easier to design large-scale, maintainable software systems, because of its package-and-module code organization.
  • Perl is fast, on par or exceeding the speed of other languages in the same application space.
  • Perl code is easy to read, understand, and maintain, if you follow a coding convention (which every competent engineer does).
  • Perl frameworks like Catalyst are available to kick-start new projects, and a mature module library speeds development over the long term.
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