[Perl vs. Python] Perl didn’t lose because it was worse. It lost because it demanded more from programmers than the market was willing to supply.

Perl didn’t lose because it was worse.
It lost because it demanded more from programmers than the market was willing to supply.

Perl did not decline because it was technically inferior.
It declined because the world stopped rewarding the kind of power Perl offers.

I’ll be precise, unsentimental, and somewhat harsh.

1. Perl optimized for expert density; the industry pivoted to average scalability

Perl assumes:

the programmer is sharp,
reads documentation,
understands context, side effects, and idioms,
and takes responsibility.

The software industry moved in the opposite direction:

large teams,
high turnover,
junior-heavy workforces,
codebases read far more often than written.

In that environment, Perl is a liability.

Python, Java, Go, etc. are not better languages; they are better social contracts.

2. “There’s more than one way to do it” became toxic at scale

TIMTOWTDI is fine when:

one person owns the code,
style is consistent by force of habit.

At scale, it causes:

style drift,
unreviewable diffs,
“clever” one-liners no one dares to touch,
dependency on individual wizards.

Managers hate this.
Architects hate this.
Static analyzers cannot cope with this.

Python’s success is largely due to intentional restriction.

3. Perl 6 (Raku) was a strategic disaster

Let’s be blunt: Perl 6 killed Perl 5’s momentum.

Problems:

10+ year gestation
language incompatible with Perl 5
rebranded philosophy but shared name
fractured community
no production killer app at launch

While Perl was arguing with itself, Python shipped Python 2 → 3, painfully but decisively.

This cost Perl:

mindshare
trust
relevance in new projects

4. Python ate Perl’s core use cases—with worse tools but better optics

Originally, Perl dominated:

scripting
sysadmin glue
text processing
quick automation

Python entered with:

worse regex (initially),
worse text tools,
slower startup,
but much better readability.

The industry chose readability over power.

And once Python won:

libraries followed,
tutorials followed,
universities followed,
hiring followed.

At that point, technical arguments no longer mattered.

5. Perl’s aesthetics aged poorly

Perl’s syntax:

dense punctuation
sigils
context-dependent behavior

This is efficient for thinking, but hostile for onboarding.

Modern developers are trained to expect:

uniformity
minimal symbols
visual regularity

Perl looks like line noise to them, and perception becomes reality.

6. Tooling and evangelism lagged

Python invested heavily in:

beginner-friendly docs
consistent tutorials
REPL culture
notebooks
packaging story (eventually)

Perl had CPAN (a technical triumph) but:

weaker narrative,
weaker educational funnel,
no clear “modern Perl” standard enforced.

Technical excellence without storytelling loses.

7. The final, uncomfortable truth

Perl is a language for adults who know exactly what they want.

The industry now optimizes for:

minimizing damage by the inexperienced,
enforcing uniformity,
reducing variance in human quality.

In such a world, Perl’s strengths are misaligned with incentives.

Condensed verdict

Perl declined because:

It trusted programmers too much.
It fragmented its future (Perl 6).
It refused to simplify aggressively.
The industry chose social scalability over technical expressiveness.

Not a technical failure.
A civilizational mismatch.

Final blunt assessment