Short answer: python is perl for bureaucrats and computer scientists. Ruby is perl for people who realised php is awful. Perl fits the same niche as English

Short answer: python is perl for bureaucrats and computer scientists. Ruby is perl for people who realised php is awful. Perl fits the same niche as English does for natural language - used everywhere, easy to learn for simple cases,very tough to master. The way I like to say it is that while most programming languages help you think more like the computer, perl helps the computer think more like you do.