Interview with Larry Wall
&quot;Perl has always considered itself primarily a programmer-centric language, while Python has always considered itself to be more institution-centric. So in a sense it&#x27;s a bit dumbed down, much like Java. You&#x27;ll note both of those languages make their greatest appeal to managers. :-) &quot;<p>Huh?  I was using Python when Perl was more popular, and this seems completely fabricated.  He&#x27;s trying to lump Python in with Java, which is bizarre because those 2 camps have pretty big philosophical differences.<p>I think that the main reason that Python became more popular because it has both clearer syntax and clearer semantics than Perl.  It is compact AND readable -- not just compact.  The data structures in Python also behave more like those you would see in a CS textbook.<p>I&#x27;m working on my own language, and I just read over the Camel Book (&quot;Learning Perl&quot;).  Honestly I don&#x27;t see much in there that I want to borrow, except maybe for ~= automatically introducing variables.  What else is good about Perl, which is<p><pre><code>    1) not in Python&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;JavaScript (like hash tables)
    2) overly terse&#x2F;clever?
</code></pre>
(Honest question)<p>Perl&#x27;s regex syntax seems to be it&#x27;s biggest influence and legacy, with Python&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;Java&#x2F;PCRE all adopting its syntax.<p>And -e in Perl is also useful -- Python&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;etc. aren&#x27;t really good for one liners like Perl.  This provides a nice gateway into the language.<p>But a lot of other features were rightly ignored by other languages IMO.<p>Also, with regard to the previous sentence, I actually consider Python OO kind of weak, but it&#x27;s definitely better than Perl&#x27;s AFAICT.