I think I was unclear about my main point. Python and Perl have many applications outside Unix tooling, but then again so does C. Both sort of started out as

I think I was unclear about my main point. Python and Perl have many applications outside Unix tooling, but then again so does C. Both sort of started out as "better shell script," and both were seen as such, but they were also seen as stable foundations for serious, long-lived software. You can build stuff on top of C, Fortran, POSIX, etc. in 2016, and be pretty confident that it will still work with their 2026 versions. That's not valuable if your slapping together an MVP that no one will care about and will die in a few months, but it's incredibly valuable for developing big, complicated software. Or for little personal utilities you want to write once, then not have to maintain. Perl and Python moved away from that longevity, each in its own way. Maybe that will make them better suited to a world of continuous Cloud-based churn, but there's more to life than that.