People love to 'hate on' Perl, but how many of them have actually used it?
No one who remembers the 90s-00s (and how incredibly helpful Perl was, until those other languages at its lunch) has any "hate", as such for Perl. Even its staunchest critics (best as I recall) still had a strong baseline respect for what it was able to accomplish, and how it moved the craft as a whole forward.
I disagree that it still makes for a good choice, for the simple overriding reason that (whatever one thinks of it) it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now.
As such it's hard to think of a good argument for bringing it into your toolchain in a big way, absent some very good reason (like some specific tool or subsystem based on it).
That said I don't mind your sticking up for it, and there's no reason you should be downvoted for doing so.
>> it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now.
It is a smelly, sturdy beast that requires minimal resources and can get you through the desert.
OP asked: "What are the most interesting, alternatives for simple scripts."
As you've stated, Perl 5 has served as an alternative to shell scripts for nearly 30 years. It may not be the best choice for every use case, but I have seen several questions on HN where people need an alternative to Bash and Python, but have no idea how easy the problem could be solved with a Perl one-liner.
All too frequently Perl is dismissed by people who are ignorant of it because it is trendy to 'hate on' it.
No one who remembers the 90s-00s (and how incredibly helpful Perl was, until those other languages at its lunch) has any "hate", as such for Perl. Even its staunchest critics (best as I recall) still had a strong baseline respect for what it was able to accomplish, and how it moved the craft as a whole forward.
I disagree that it still makes for a good choice, for the simple overriding reason that (whatever one thinks of it) it has objectively become a niche language, and a will continue to remain a slowly fading one at that. In fact it's been solidly on that course for close to 20 years now.
As such it's hard to think of a good argument for bringing it into your toolchain in a big way, absent some very good reason (like some specific tool or subsystem based on it).
That said I don't mind your sticking up for it, and there's no reason you should be downvoted for doing so.