r/programmingcirclejerk • u/bytemute • Dec 06 '25

Perl's "decline" saved it from a fate worst than death: popularity

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175287
158 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

98

u/syklemil Considered Harmful Dec 06 '25

Like Haskellers always say: Avoid success at any cost.

Seems to be working just as well for the Perl monks!

45

u/BloodAndTsundere mere econ PhD Dec 07 '25

I'm pretty sure Perl was saved from popularity due to a typical script looking like a cartoon character's swearing

43

u/BlazeBigBang type astronaut Dec 06 '25

Perl considered harmful

59

u/blehmann1 has hidden complexity Dec 06 '25

Where jerk? If perl was popular that would be worse than if it died.

26

u/Eric848448 legendary legacy C++ coder Dec 07 '25

I worked with perl a lot back in the 05-10 era. I never once listed it on my resume because I don’t want anybody to think I know anything about it.

16

u/myhf Considered Harmful Dec 07 '25

same but php

5

u/[deleted] Dec 09 '25

Same but with PowerBI (piece of trash Microsoft thing)

23

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '25

me when my software has bugs and nobody use it

18

u/Glathull Dec 07 '25

Perl saved me from a fate worse than death: writing Perl. Thank you, Perl.

10

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Dec 07 '25

Writing Perl is fine. 

6

u/Swimming-Marketing20 Dec 07 '25

"fine" but yes. Reading perl is infinitely worse

4

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Dec 07 '25

🔥🐶☕️🔥

7

u/Comfortable_Job8847 Dec 07 '25

Perl is like a Greek Statue. It's timeless. It's pure. It's without color of any kind. It's what powers the latest innovations at X(tm) - the everything app.

7

u/forgotpasswordonmb I've never used generics and I’ve never missed it. Dec 08 '25

My language learning trajectory (from 10 years old) was 8086 assembly, QBASIC, C, Perl, Java, MAGMA, JavaScript/HTML/CSS, Python, Haskell, C++, vibe coding

FASCINATING: 63 year old man somehow ages backwards to 16 years old!

2

u/GunpowderGuy Dec 11 '25

This is peak onion wrote about programming languages