On the Decline of Perl – external factors
IMHO the biggest issue that blocked Perl&#x27;s broader adoption was the really obfuscated handling of nested data structures including objects. Anything beyond array of arrays or hash of hashes was a pain. It was and it still is way superior to Python for hacking of flat files, but once you needed to go beyond a hash the pain was real.<p>That was 20+ years ago, and Python filled this space with its easy definition of classes and candy syntax. Where Perl overdid on hackery, Python may have overdone on sugar -- but it clearly won the love of the masses.<p>Now, 25 years later, the ship has probably sailed for Perl, and -- while I still prefer it to sed&#x2F;grep&#x2F;awk and Python for simpler tasks, I don&#x27;t see it conquering Python space for more complicated processing.