In an article last month, I sang the praises of Perl 5.
2024-12-11 Perl 5 Is Pretty Awesome, Actually
So I've been getting back into it, slowly. And here are a few pieces of advice that you didn't ask for but I'm gonna give you anyway.
1. Get the `perlcritic` tool from CPAN and use it.
2. Buy, beg, borrow, or steal a copy of Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices.
`perlcritic` will tell you what to do. It's a code-checking tool, a la `pylint` or what ever that thing the cool Python kids are using in 2025.
The Conway book, on the other hand, clearly explains *why* you should do what `perlcritic` is telling you to do. And if you're a good programmer, I'd say you shouldn't just blindly follow rules. You should know why you should follow them and why you might need or want to flagrantly break them. Really this applies to a lot of human laws and rules and other BS.
Modern Perl is also on my reading list.
Of course, you should be using `perl -cw`, which has been around for a long long time and is amazingly effective.
Other tools I recommend are `perltidy` for formatting. That's another one that has been around for a long while. It's insanely great for some blind people too, especially the kinds of us (like me) who care fuck all about most visual layout type stuff.
If you have additional Perl advice or can explain why I'm full of shit, send it along using one the contact methods listed on my website, and I'll be happy to update this post accordingly.
Happy hacking in 2025!