I think it’s awesome that you did/do that. I don’t think it’s an issue of scariness. I think the issues are ageing code looking messy compared to the promise/hype of new toys, lack of applications, and negative campaigning. Contrary to what everyone says every political season, negative campaigning, FUD, works. A large portion of the python crowd is vocal, hostile, and shameless whereas the majority of the Perl community is live and let live, the best tool for the job, there is more than one language with which to do it. The Java marketing engine and M$FT certification pyramids also drive Perl down in other ways.

I think being more vocal about the specific places Perl is better than other languages would help a lot; and not just regexen because that has become something of an albatross; yes, we love and need regular expressions but not the dirty mini-language of Perl’s. Perl is faster than Ruby and no slower than any of the others; with XS it can be better still. Catalyst is more flexible than Rails and there are many other Perl-based choices that, thanks to PSGI, are trivial to mix and match. Perl’s Unicode support is just the best. Perl’s defect density is the lowest. Perl questions are almost always answered accurately and quickly on StackOverflow and PerlMonks. Perl’s notions of scope are better than Python’s. Every single thing about Perl is better than PHP (except availability of out of the box applications and this is a actually a serious problem for Perl).

If someone can just absorb one or two facts of points where Perl is objectively superior to alternatives then it becomes a viable peer again and not just a confused set of anti-Perl statements from competitors who don’t know any better.

(Update: missing word added.)