I would call it "bad image" instead of "bad reputation", because when you look into it, a lot of very stable and maintainable software is written in Perl. I sus

I would call it "bad image" instead of "bad reputation", because when you look into it, a lot of very stable and maintainable software is written in Perl. I suspect the image of Perl is mostly derived from hearsay rather than from actual experience in a real-life scenario. I know that for example xing.com and united-domains.com use Perl a lot. I have to say, it kind of makes me a bit sad, that the image of Perl is so bad while in fact it is a great language. Almost like a genious ugly-looking child in school. I wish more people would actually try it and give it a proper chance. That is also true for other languages as well, like Haskell and Prolog.