Perl: The Fading Script Known for its powerful text processing capabilities, Perl's complex syntax and the emergence of more modern languages have led to a dwindling demand. As we head into 2024, investing time in Perl might yield a different return than learning more contemporary languages could offer.

Python is often preferred for larger, more complex applications due to its readability and the wide availability of libraries, especially in fields like data analysis and machine learning. Perl, on the other hand, excels in quick scripting, text manipulation, and tasks where complex regular expressions are required.

Perl continues to have a loyal following, and not without good reason. It's versatile, powerful, supports all programming paradigms, and has a huge library of modules that allow you to interface with just about anything, or do just about anything.

The plan to go to Perl 7 brought up more discussion, however, and the Perl Steering Committee canceled it to avoid issues with backward compatibility for scripts that were not written to the pragmas and modules that would become the default in Perl 7.