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This matches my experience.

I started programming in the late 90s using Perl as my first "real" language. When I first saw some Python code (2.3 if memory serves), I found it much easier to understand. Not necessarily easier to write, but diving into a Python codebase 6 months later was a lot easier than doing the same than with Perl. Purely subjective, but I was far from the only one, even if quite a few people at the time preferred Perl.

Later, when the Web really took off, running PHP 4 was much easier to get going than either Python or Perl, so a lot of us went with that.

And yeah afterwards JS with node.js in particular. The millions pumped into it by Google certainly helped.

There was also a time a bit later with Ruby getting really popular. Not just for new projects, I heard of some codebases migrating from Perl to Ruby, when the writing was on the wall for Perl 5.

Go, I think when it became popular not many people were still using Perl. Also not really something you would use to bang out a quick script with. Probably more of a competitor to Java.

As for me, back to Python as my bread and butter. Probably haven't touched Perl in 20 years at this point. Looks like gibberish to me now...





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