Perl mentioned at The New Stack

The New Stack has mentioned Perl in the context of TIOBE:

On the scripting side, Perl has also returned to prominence. Once the undisputed leader in scripting, Perl declined after years of internal fragmentation and competition from newer languages, writes Paul Jansen, CEO of TIOBE in the post. “Recently, however, it has staged a comeback, reclaiming a position in the TIOBE top 10 since January 2018,” he writes.

Perl is actually number 11 on the index right now. It was ranked 30th at the same time last year.

“It’s hard to judge a programming language’s popularity based on some of the indexes,” Andrew Cornwall, an analyst at Forrester Research, tells The New Stack.

— Statistical language R is making a comeback against Python.

As we know these rankings are quite arbitrary and the methodology is more than flawed due the selection of repositories surveyed and the ones which get ignored. However, MSFT's long-runnning smear campaign against Perl is losing steam.

Comment on Perl mentioned at The New Stack

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Re: Perl mentioned at The New Stack by hippo (Archbishop) on Feb 13, 2026 at 14:24 UTC
Yet, Cornwall says he does not think Perl is making a comeback. “I’ve run into zero developers who are choosing it over alternatives like Python for new development,” he tells The New Stack. No doubt, if you only hang about in Python circles that might well be your experience. OTOH, a more broad set of connections would have allowed him to run into plenty of developers who are. Hello! Also worth noting that this single anecdotal data point comes from "Andrew Cornwall, an analyst at Forrester Research" and therefore not a developer, programmer, scripter, coder or anything remotely connected with, you know, creating software. 🦛	[reply]
Re^2: Perl mentioned at The New Stack by ysth (Canon) on Feb 16, 2026 at 04:41 UTC
Weird phrasing "run into" from Cornwall; Forrester Research claims to survey "500,000 consumers, executives, and tech leaders annually" and provide strategic guidance based on that (those categories also not actual developers).	[reply]
Re: Perl mentioned at The New Stack by CountZero (Bishop) on Feb 21, 2026 at 13:20 UTC
And later in that article it is written: In fact, everyone, including TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen, seems puzzled at its rank, Corwall argues. Jansen attributes its TIOBE ranking to the number of Perl books. Wired seems to have coincided with a boost in its TIOBE rank in 2025; perhaps it was the 5.4.2.0 maintenance release that kept Perl users searching, he says. The 5.4.2.0 maintenance release??? I think they refer to the 5.42.0 release. And it was a normal release, not a maintenance release. How can one trust a ranking made by people who don't know what they are talking about? CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James My blog: Imperial Deltronics	[reply]
Re: Perl mentioned at The New Stack by Jenda (Abbot) on Feb 19, 2026 at 23:32 UTC
MSFT smear campaign??? Dude, there is no campaign. There never was. There's the Perl 6 aka let's add absolutely anything anyone can think of into the language and then some more bummer. The twenty years of "it will be ready by next Christmas" followed by "we finally admit that the result doesn't look anything like Perl, let's invent a new name, draw a childish logo and babble about inclusivity". That's what killed Perl. That project should never have been called Perl 6! Not even before the absolutely insane feature creep. Jenda 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a manual!	[reply]