> Why isn't Perl as popular as Python? Perl was significantly more popular at one point, but it slowly lost traction while Python gradually gained traction ove

> Why isn't Perl as popular as Python? Perl was significantly more popular at one point, but it slowly lost traction while Python gradually gained traction over the years. Better ecosystem for numeric computing is definitely a big reason for the success of Python, by the question is why Python gained a foothold in that niche in the first place. It think it is because Python is just a lot more accessible to people with different backgrounds. Perl really grew out of shell scripting as a supercharged alternative to Bash and Awk, but retaining many of the quirks for familiarity. Python on the other hand grew out of research in teaching programming to beginners.