Perl is still tremendously useful as system scripting language (one may prefer bash iif does not know Perl) and text processing. Perl was extended beyond its natural scope because in a certain time lapse, it was the only tool available to do quick prototyping and an aid to quickly deploy complex web applications (particularly). Maybe its true that it has come to the final developement phase. Other languages, more focused on specific purposes and without the limitations/quirks of Perl (TMTOWTDI - There's more than one way to do it - is a problem more that an advantage), have picked up its most useful characteristics, so Perl is no more so central in application development and it will go back to its original scope. If Perl will go extinct it would mean that other , better languages have took its place, but this is not a problem, it's normal evolution.

good question.. If most if not all of the jobs can be carried out by machines how can a growing population earn a decent living? I think it depends on who owns the land and the means of production. In a capitalistic world in which only the rich can afford this kind technology this will end up with war and famine, in a communist world in which all belongs to the state maybe people will share the output of the production, in theory. We saw however that amongst communist there are people that are more equal than others and so ...

In general, if you need a debugger while developing your code then you may not know what you are doing. Maybe you are developing very special stuff, otherwise the intensive use of a debugger means either lack of experience and/or skill..

If I were a shareholder I would be quite worried about the (cr)Apple strategy. IMHO this is a clear signal of lack of innovative ideas. Innovation cannot be a continuos flow and they are reaching their limits. I doubt that the iphone 5 will be a planetary success because of the lack of real innovation in it. It's a sad black thing with infamous rounded corners. It's not appealing neither aestethically nor tecnologically. The competitors do at least the same and also much better. They appear on the descending path.

The patent attack unleashed by Apple against the most important Android manufacturers and indirectly against Android itself could benefit M$ , eventually. If manufactured get pissed against Google because of its patent vulnerabilities they could switch to windows 8 that is far more safe from this standpoint (M$ and Apple have cross licensing agreements). This "Bing" story is another element that make me think about at some secret agreement between the two most evil companies in the IT.

Maybe Apple will win and will rule them all using the "rounded corners" of the power. As a consumer I think that this is the last thing that we need and fortunately I have high hopes that this won't happen. Apple is going against the entire industry, against the consumers, against the policy makers (well, those of them that are not yet bribed :-) ) and maybe more. She can't succeed mostly like Hitler and the Nazi Germany couldn't win. Apple is rich and powerful but can't win if everybody will join forces.

Apple can't win because Apple is, at the end, against the general interest. An entire industry cannot be at the mercy of a single player. Even if they are right (but they aren't) under the current patent's law system, the civil society will perceive the injustice and that they don't need another modern, greedy tyrant that imposes its extortion against consumers and competitors.

I suppose that when people will go to the mall and see then Samsung's shelves empty (as happened to me when the Galaxy 10.1 was banned in Europe for a while) and is forced to buy Apple crap or desist, will get the perception of what Apple actually is and will realize that this company is evil. I recommend anyone I know against buying Apple products because Apple is bad for the consumers and for the innovation.

Totally agreed! Coders use a formalism to build programs. The base symbols used don't matter.

IMHO we are nearing a radical shift in desktop user interface technology driven by the evolution of the web. No more GTK or QT, at least at the top development level but html5/css/javascript. The standards will help to develop desktop components in a separate way so that instead of a monolitic desktop system like KDE or GNOME we will have a standard framework (maybe gecko, like on B2G) on which the components will fit. I am a longtime Linux-On-The-Desktop user (about 18 years), I love KDE and I'm using it since version 2.0 but I am finding myself more and more using applications that don't rely on KDE.

• Konqueror is not up with the competition any more (it was always lagging behind), so I use mainly Firefox

• I don't use Kmail any more cause the mess they did with the akonadi stuff so i am using Thunderbird now (not a good looking program but fits my needs. It's fast, it's reliable, has a lot of useful extensions, the html rendering is way better)

• I used Kdevelop but it cannot compete with Eclipse or Netbeans for my needs at least (and it has more bugs, some really annoying)

• Libreoffice is more complete ad reliable than Koffice or whatever it calls itself now

• Social stuff is migrated mainly on the smartphone...

So... what remains is the desktop, not enough..

I have been using 6 Beta for two months because of the instabilities of version 5.x. Typing something in the location bar was often enough to crash the browser. Chrome is not complete or flexible as the the other browsers on the market but for sure is the faster. This only thing makes me to prefer chrome over the others.