It's funny how often this conversation comes up, offline and online. Out of curiosity, a PM search produced these interesting vectors on similar questions.

They are quite interesting reading. Hearing many veteran Monks' comments and experiences was pretty useful. Take a look!

These are in no particular order, plus, I'm confident I must've missed some threads in my searching/reading.

The "... vs" Debates Perl vs C++ Perl Vs. C Perl VS Python perl vs ruby php vs. perl PHP vs. Perl for the 10,000th time COBOL vs. Perl Real Languages vs. Perl Perl speed VS. other languages Perl vs Lisp/Java/C/C++ Kung-fu vs Perl  lol

General Discussions, Debates or Advocacy why i may have to leave perl...  very interesting reading Perl advocacy Perl IS a programming language, right?  Also revealing (OT) Finding Technology Solutions  More relevant than it sounds Choose the most powerful language Linux Journal article - possible advocacy potential Management that just doesn't understand  A bit OT, but poignant Perl = Machine Language?  Another view Freedom is Slavery Perl Advocacy: Sometimes java is bitter... Perl and Java

Plus, there's the Perl Mongers; the Perl advocacy people, and Tom Christiansen has a "Perl vs...." page Here.

Spending some time on this was very good for me just now. Thanks for bringing it up.