Try Python. It's very simple and very very powerful. I think that eventually Python will replace Perl for larger projects.. Perl is just a very practical script language but it's meant for small to medium projects. You can write larger projects but I doubt whether you can maintain them in a long run. Perl is undoubtedly SPECIAL, but the same way as assembler. It's suitable to use it but for SPECIAL purposes. And CGI scripting and text parsing is what's PERL's designed for. If you want larger projects and code clarity Python is the best choise among beginners.