Perl

With Perl 6 coming out, is Perl worth learning? (complete newbie to Perl here)

On a side note, does having a BDFL actually benefit the progress of a language in any way?

does having a BDFL actually benefit the progress of a language in any way?

Not in Perl's case.

Do you like freedom? Perl == freedom. You can write a clear code or you can write a short code. Try it, you won't regret it.

INB4 Perl is for faggots, Lisp is better.

>>3
more like python is better

perl6 has no clear release date. right now a big part of it is under redesign.

Python is better.

Perl is worth learning only if your job requires it. I had to, for a short while, maintain a rather large set of scripts written in it, and even though "best practices" were enforced, tracking down bugs was nightmarish. The language itself has a very "ad hoc" feel to it, like it grew organically and accumulated tons of cruft in the process. When it works it's good, when it doesn't it can be extremely irritating. The grammar itself is undecidable.

>>1
Yes

I really like programming in Perl. I can't get enough of it.

>>1
does having a BDFL actually benefit the progress of a language in any way?
Absolutely not. It hinders any kind of real progress, while adding new ``feature'' like a new useless procedure, or XKCD joke module, in the library.
See: Python, its lambdas, its tail calls, its antigravity, from __future__ import braces and this modules.

>>10
The goto module allows you to force tail-call optimization.

>>12
The goto module is an ugly hack hacked on an ugly hacked up language.

>>13
It is considered good practice^{[by me]} to use it in order to manually optimize tail-calls.