Perl Relevance Debate

Comments discuss Perl's declining popularity, readability criticisms, comparisons to Python and Ruby, and whether it's still worth learning or using today.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Programming Languages
11,167
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9192
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
46
2008
260
2009
438
2010
589
2011
669
2012
625
2013
725
2014
595
2015
560
2016
428
2017
612
2018
565
2019
718
2020
621
2021
783
2022
787
2023
660
2024
630
2025
833
2026
23

Keywords

NPM CPAN GP GGP ABC SQL AOL Amazon.com ABC.My JavaScript perl python language clever incomprehensible abc syntax noise code conventions

Sample Comments

oblio Jul 8, 2017 View on HN

Perl might not be that popular precisely because you could even program it in Latin :D

jaggederest Aug 14, 2007 View on HN

I thought that Perl was the swiss army chainsaw? Now I'm all confused.

alexpotato Jul 31, 2025 View on HN

"Perl is a write only language"

mikevm Dec 9, 2015 View on HN

Is there a reason to learn Perl these days when we have Python?

peteretep Jun 7, 2012 View on HN

Do you really think of Perl as an obscure language?

hn_go_brrrrr Dec 2, 2021 View on HN

Yeah, those Perl hackers are really out of touch :-)

2OEH8eoCRo0 Jul 23, 2025 View on HN

Perl is outstanding, I wish more things used it!

k__ Aug 29, 2019 View on HN

What did Perl do better than others when it came out?

singingfish Feb 5, 2018 View on HN

And people say perl is unreadable ;)

rudiger Jan 26, 2011 View on HN

But isn't Perl the one we all left behind?