# Perl 263 Hacker News commenters recommended Perl and 213 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 25 years (32 owners). **Verdict:** A long-lived scripting language praised for text processing, Unix glue and quick one-off scripts, with strong backward compatibility; critics call it hard to read and poorly suited to team codebases. ## Why people recommend it - Great for quick text-processing scripts (6 comments): "It has many of the required structures (hashes/maps, ad hoc structs, etc) and is great for knocking up a rough and ready prototype of something." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100772)) "Perl remained (and remains!) eminently useful in its original domain of Unix system automation glue and ad-hoc text analysis." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45981873)) "Perl is extremely expressive, which is amazing for one-off scripts, and awful for code that's meant to be shared" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177277)) - Better shell, awk replacement (6 comments): "everything from HTTP clients, TLS and JSON are all builtin which makes it a very stable and easy way to replace what I would normally have implemented in shell scripts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48104857)) "There's already a language that provides all the features of awk plus modern language conveniences, and is available on every system you can think of." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006734)) "If you know perl and have a whole host of utils from a unix box, you can script the workflow you want quite easily" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45954159)) - Backward compatible, old scripts keep working (5 comments): "I can still look at crazy object oriented perl meta-programming stuff I wrote 20 years ago, and figure out what it's doing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46047112)) "Perl is also easier to use and deploy than python and ruby, as upgrades don't break your scripts and dependencies." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295272)) "The Perl community has placed a high value on backward compatibility, allowing older code to continue functioning" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061268)) - Highly expressive, concise syntax (4 comments): "Perl is powerful, expressive, and cryptic. Its popularity faded during a time when the popular trend of programming languages was towards simplicity and legibility." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980740)) "Perl is most human-like programming language, which is what makes it great, but also what makes it unreliable for large scale programming." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994260)) "Perl is extremely expressive, which is amazing for one-off scripts, and awful for code that's meant to be shared" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177277)) ## What people warn about - Cryptic, write-only code (6 comments): "grab some line noise from perl and you would first need something to translate it into idiomatic text" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45986892)) "Its "write only" reputation was well-deserved - the original author of a non-trivial Perl program might be able to maintain it, but once a team is involved, forget it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984976)) "trying to learn to code from reading other peoples perl scripts was way harder than the (then) newer language alternatives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46179831)) - Too many competing ways (3 comments): "Perl was clearly unfit for this perfect future with its proud selection of 4 or 5 implementations of OOP, and it hurt the language promotion a lot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46183328)) "There are too many ways to do things in perl because of the various flavors / takes on how to do things." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175941)) "Perl’s alien syntax and how there were multiple competing “best practices” put off newcomers and made it difficult to code review." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355583)) - Breaks down on team projects (3 comments): "Perl is most human-like programming language, which is what makes it great, but also what makes it unreliable for large scale programming." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994260)) "it worked great for ME but when I started interacting with other people's perl code, it all broke down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46188747)) "Its "write only" reputation was well-deserved - the original author of a non-trivial Perl program might be able to maintain it, but once a team is involved, forget it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984976)) - Fractured, intimidating community (2 comments): "the community was smaller, fractured by Perl 6 and dominated by some ahem divisive characters which made it intimidating for newcomers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983489)) "Perl culture was too much about craft-mastery which ended up being at odds with most corporate cultures." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175680)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend - [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend - [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend - [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend - [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Perl", https://hackerapproved.com/p/perl/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).