Perl in web development

Question

I heard a lot about using Perl in web development for CGI scripts, but are they still widely used today? In terms of development (rather than administrative), is it worth learning? What would be an example of what is better handled in Perl than PHP?

thanks

Answer 1

My answer is that CGI is out of date and you should not learn Perl web programming in conjunction with CGI. Theres a very nice web framework called Mojolicious , which can be an interesting way to get started with web programming in Perl. As soon as you want to deploy the application to the server, you can use PSGI to communicate between the server and your application. Dotcloud seems to be a promising, hassle-free host for such applications.

Regarding the PHP vs Perl question, it's hard to answer without calling flamewar. Perl is a much more mature and mature ecosystem for me. Opinions may vary.

Answer 2

Don't worry about CGI in any language (Perl, C, etc.), but look at modern web frameworks. And in this area Perl is fully loaded:

• Dancer
• Catalyst
• Mojolicious
• Webnano

And since they all use PSGI, you can deploy them to any server such as FastCGI, Apache / mod_perl, nginx and as deprecated CGI scripts. There are also specific Perl application servers such as Starman , Corona , Tatsumaki , etc.

Answer 3

When creating subjective predicates, this is not a good idea, I can only argue with some sites about job offers (as you can see what perl still leads to):

• indeed
• simplyhired

CGI, on the other hand, is archaic. Perl developers now use Plack (PSGI) and similar methods.

Answer 4

I would venture to say that nothing has been done with Perl / CGI scripts today, but there are probably a lot of outdated sites that are still implemented with Perl / CGI.

From a development point of view, I would say it's worth spending a day or two CGI training on Perl (if you already know Perl). I'm talking about this because CGI (Common Gateway Interface) with Perl will provide you with the basics of the Internet (namely HTTP POST, GET, Request Variables, Server Environment Variables). With Perl / CGI, you can manipulate these things directly, and that practical abilities are useful when working with any of today's modern frameworks.