Is Perl "less popuplar" than it used to be ... perhaps. So what? That does not mean that it is dying anymore than the fact that fewer people read books these days means that soon no one will read books. Instead of obsessing about meaningless "market share" "statistics", just answer two questions: what other language has as vibrant and active an online community as perlmonks? and what other language has as large and diverse a repository of modules and libraries as CPAN?