It’s not new {that a} language is slowly deserted by its builders, given the quickly altering world of coding, an unforgiving job market, and the inflow of AI coding instruments. Going through that destiny now’s Perl, with builders transferring on to fashionable alternate options, pushed by poor readability, shrinking neighborhood assist, and an growing old ecosystem.
Posts from Reddit, LinkedIn, and technical blogs paint a grim image for the once-popular scripting language. Declining job alternatives and mounting upkeep challenges are sounding the dying knell for Perl.
A consumer on Reddit summed up the sentiment, saying, “Perl is legendary for its one-liners, however not for writing massive packages.”
The remark echoes throughout numerous threads bemoaning Perl’s syntax and maintainability. Others pointed to the issue of onboarding builders. “I inherited a Perl codebase as soon as. Half my time went into deciphering it. By no means once more,” stated one other consumer.
What Occurred to the High Paying Language?
In its early days within the late Nineteen Nineties, Perl dominated internet growth and textual content processing. With its clear syntax and ease of use, it turned an environment friendly language for brand new initiatives, making builders productive—one thing not distinctive to Perl.
“Python and Ruby each have a a lot cleaner syntax, but nonetheless supply very comparable performance, wonderful portability, ample normal and third-party libraries, wonderful documentation, supportive communities, nice regex assist, and principally all the things else that Perl presents,” a programmer commented on Hacker Information.
However that very same outdated flexibility with the syntax turned its greatest flaw. “As codebases grew and groups expanded, flexibility turned Perl’s Achilles’ heel,” wrote Sohail Saifi from CoderStop.
Regardless of the announcement of Perl 7, utilization continues to be stagnant. The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 reveals its utilization stagnating since 2022, which is barely near 2.4%. The TIOBE index paints the same image, displaying Perl drop out of the highest 20 languages checklist for the primary time ever.
Regardless that the salaries for Perl builders are greater than these of Elixir and others, on Hacker Information, one developer famous, “Out of ~800 positions, precisely 1 is for Perl.” This reveals that the language may be very area of interest for builders, and solely exceptionally good expertise can obtain high-paying jobs by this.
The job market dynamics are additionally pushing corporations emigrate. A 2025 job posting learn: “Senior Perl Software program Developer – Legacy Techniques… Debug and resolve advanced points, comparable to lacking modules, failing cron jobs, and dependency conflicts.”
These roles are few and more and more framed round “holding the lights on” slightly than innovation. In 2025, it’s not nearly writing higher code—it’s about writing code in languages which are nonetheless related to the job market and AI helps with that.
Readability is likely one of the high complaints with Perl. Its infamous use of sigils—$@%—and its “There’s Extra Than One Approach To Do It” mantra as soon as gave builders freedom. Now, they create confusion.
Python and JavaScript have Eaten Perl’s Lunch
Python’s cleaner syntax and wealthy libraries make it way more approachable in textual content processing. AI has helped Python grow to be probably the most used language in 2024, and now in 2025, the utilization is growing much more.
In internet growth, Perl’s CGI-based roots really feel prehistoric subsequent to Node.js and fashionable frameworks. Because the blogger places it, “Sustaining legacy Perl codebases will nonetheless pay nicely for some time, however new Perl initiatives are more and more uncommon.”
A number of Perl builders have exited the ecosystem altogether. One in every of them wrote in 2023: “All of my Perl modules are in upkeep mode… I not do any skilled work with Perl, and I haven’t completed any since 2017 or so.” One other added, “I’m uninterested in arguing with the neighborhood about modernising. The language stagnated, the neighborhood resisted, and so we moved on.”
The ecosystem has stagnated. Many key modules are not actively developed.
Because of this, corporations are reacting in 3 ways: gradual migration to languages like Python or JavaScript, complete rewrites of their methods, or placing Perl methods in “upkeep mode” whereas transferring all new growth elsewhere.
Furthermore, corporations couldn’t discover anybody below 35 who had ever written Perl. That was sufficient to drive a whole rewrite.
The Perl Basis has tried to battle again, funding core growth and working cubicles at occasions like FOSDEM. However participation is declining. Model 5.42.0 is within the works, but even some maintainers privately admit the momentum has shifted.
Perl’s decline now appears to be like terminal.
In 2025, figuring out Perl is extra about supporting legacy methods than constructing something new. And whereas that also presents some worth, particularly in fields like finance or telecom, the overwhelming developer consensus is obvious: Perl is not price investing in.
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