Why Nobody Codes in Perl Anymore
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Analyzing Perl: The Messy Philosophy Behind the Internet’s Duct Tape Language
Explore why Perl, the language born from linguistic study and characterized by its intentional messiness, offers timeless lessons about humility and complexity in software design. Understand the trade-offs between expressive freedom and rigid order in programming.
Short Summary
- Recognize Perl as a dominant force around the millennium, powering major sites like Amazon and Google.
- Grasp Perl’s core design tenet: TWM—There’s More Than One Way To Do It—which prioritizes human expression over syntactic purity.
- Learn how its creator, Larry Wall, applied linguistic principles, treating language evolution as organic rather than orderly.
- Reflect on the argument that embracing complexity (like Perl’s structure) fosters necessary humility when building large technical systems.
This discussion unpacks an article arguing for the enduring relevance of Perl, contrasting its maximalist, multi-option syntax with more orderly languages like Python and Lisp. The speaker examines specific Perl code examples, critiques AI attempts at implementing algorithms like Quicksort in Perl, and ultimately pulls a philosophical lesson regarding our understanding of complex systems from the language's existence.
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Top Comments (10)
It's because Perl programmers on their quest to increase code density ascended and reached Perl-Nirvana, achieving infinite power with zero keystrokes
"Perl looks like an explosion at an ASCII factory" 😂
Interviewing for my first post-college job in 2000, the company's CTO was impressed with my Perl experience but lamented that my Python experience was worthless because, as much as he liked Python, clients had no interest in it so "it's never going to catch on".
I feel called out. I’m a Perl programmer in 2025.
C++ motto is "there's more than one way to do it and none of them are correct"
Used to write Perl. It wasn’t nearly as bad as people said. The only bad things was really that people didn’t know Regex, and I did.
There is a better multiverse timeline where Perl is the dominant language for programming for the back-end and front-end of the web, Gopher protocol dominates the web, Steve Jobs never returned from India and the Blackberry is the ultimate smart phone tech and we are all seeking orthopedic therapy for our thumbs
Perl is a wonderful language for the thing it was created to do….I remember how clumsy all other languages seemed whenever I had to ‘do stuff with text’… I haven’t used it over the past 10 years or so, I STILL miss its brilliant (and fast) ability to do anything with text. People loved to make themselves feel clever by writing spaghetti code in Perl - and it allowed for insane syntax (but you did NOT need to do this)…and that was where the majority of hate comes from…
I coded in Perl for over 20 years. The code I wrote then is nearly impenetrable. But it worked. I wasn’t great at it but I kept doing it. Now, 5 years after leaving Perl, I look back fondly. All my learning programming stems from that and I wouldn’t be where I am with python now if it wasn’t for that. Long live Perl!
I like Perl. I miss writing Perl. The thing about Perl, it tells you a lot about the programmer who wrote it: if you can read it, it's because that programmer took care to make sure you could. It lets you be sloppy, but it doesn't make you. It's text processing is fabulous, and it embeds well into C (and vice versa). And the community is supportive and welcoming.
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Top Comments (10)
It's because Perl programmers on their quest to increase code density ascended and reached Perl-Nirvana, achieving infinite power with zero keystrokes
"Perl looks like an explosion at an ASCII factory" 😂
Interviewing for my first post-college job in 2000, the company's CTO was impressed with my Perl experience but lamented that my Python experience was worthless because, as much as he liked Python, clients had no interest in it so "it's never going to catch on".
I feel called out. I’m a Perl programmer in 2025.
C++ motto is "there's more than one way to do it and none of them are correct"
Used to write Perl. It wasn’t nearly as bad as people said. The only bad things was really that people didn’t know Regex, and I did.
There is a better multiverse timeline where Perl is the dominant language for programming for the back-end and front-end of the web, Gopher protocol dominates the web, Steve Jobs never returned from India and the Blackberry is the ultimate smart phone tech and we are all seeking orthopedic therapy for our thumbs
Perl is a wonderful language for the thing it was created to do….I remember how clumsy all other languages seemed whenever I had to ‘do stuff with text’… I haven’t used it over the past 10 years or so, I STILL miss its brilliant (and fast) ability to do anything with text. People loved to make themselves feel clever by writing spaghetti code in Perl - and it allowed for insane syntax (but you did NOT need to do this)…and that was where the majority of hate comes from…
I coded in Perl for over 20 years. The code I wrote then is nearly impenetrable. But it worked. I wasn’t great at it but I kept doing it. Now, 5 years after leaving Perl, I look back fondly. All my learning programming stems from that and I wouldn’t be where I am with python now if it wasn’t for that. Long live Perl!
I like Perl. I miss writing Perl. The thing about Perl, it tells you a lot about the programmer who wrote it: if you can read it, it's because that programmer took care to make sure you could. It lets you be sloppy, but it doesn't make you. It's text processing is fabulous, and it embeds well into C (and vice versa). And the community is supportive and welcoming.