>Oddly enough, I spent part of the last week browsing books on Python and Ruby >in the interest of broadening my horizons. > that's a good approach - try to see what is around.
for me, python and ruby (and some other languages) are very comparable to perl, in terms of programming effieciency. All of them provide a very siggnificant boost compared to low-level C programming. And the Perl is pioneer, being the first one. But this boost has approximately same value for scripting languages, thus making all these languages similar, WRT programmers efficiency. And under these circumtances the winner will be those who offering better OO, GUI, community support, etc. (Perl's community support is a winner, because of perlmonks.org) So, Python, and Ruby have same power, as languages, but could be considered as more modern by external reviewers, thus treating Perl as old. BR, Vadim.
