NYCPHP Meetup

[Aaron Fischer]

Greetings,

On Wednesday I was in Boston attending Macworld and found myself 
inevitably drooling over the various book offerings at the O'Reilly 
booth.  One of the many titles that jumped out was "Spidering Hacks" by 
Kevin Hemenway and Tara Calishain.  However, I refrained from 
purchasing because the book is based on the use of Perl to perform most 
or all of the spidering functionality.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/spiderhks/

So far, PHP is the only programming/scripting language that I have 
played with.  I thought I would ponder the following before purchasing 
this book:

A.  Can I be achieving the same results using PHP that I can using this 
book and Perl?
B.  Are there other technologies that would be more desirable to 
achieve spidering functionality?
C.  What is the perceived future of Perl?  Does it still have something 
to offer when compared with other programming languages today?  Is it 
worth me spending the time to learn it?

Granted, some of these questions may bring a certain level of 
subjectivity into play.  I'd be interested to hear any 
thoughts/suggestions that folks would like to provide.  I'm not averse 
to getting my feet wet with Perl if I feel that I am developing a 
skillset that will increase my marketability.

Thanks!

-Aaron