[chromatic]

Maybe until the 2001 O'Reilly layoffs. Tim hired Larry for about 5 years, but that was mostly working on the third edition of the Camel. A handful of other Perl luminaries worked there at the same time (Jon Orwant, Nat Torkington).

When I joined in 2002, there were only a couple of developers in general, and no one sponsored to work on or evangelize any specific technology full time. Sometimes I wonder if Sun had more paid people working on Tcl.

I don't mean to malign or sideline the work anyone at ORA or ActiveState did in those days. Certainly the latter did more work to make Perl a first-class language on Windows than anyone. Yet that's very different from a funded Python Software Foundation or Sun supporting Java or the entire web browser industry funding JavaScript or....

[colinstrickland]

Thanks for detailed reply. Yes, the marketing budget for Java was unmatched, but to my eye they were in retreat towards the Enterprise datacentre by 2001. I don't think the Python foundation had launched until 2001. Amazon was migrating off Perl and Oracle. JavaScript only got interesting after Google maps/Wave I think, arguably the second browser wars start when Apple launches Safari, late 2002.

So, I guess the counterfactual line of enquiry ought to be why Perl didn't, or couldn't, or didn't want, to pivot towards stronger commercial backing, sooner.