The world of Perl

Perl is a remarkable language. It is, in our opinion, the most successful modular programming environment.

In fact, Perl modules are the closest things to the fabled “software ICs” (that is, the software equivalent of integrated circuits, components that can be used in various applications without understanding all of their inner workings) that the software world has seen. There are many reasons for this, one of the most important being that there is a centralized, coordinated module repository, CPAN, which reduces the amount of energy wasted on competing, incompatible implementations of functionality. See Appendix A for more resources.