There are also the other obvious contenders. PHP has been there all along, and it’s almost coming up from entirely the opposite cultural background of Perl. PHP is a users language. It’s built to be deployed by copying script files to your home directory, with minimal server side impact or privileges. It’s barely designed at all, but it encounters explosive growth all the way through the first (and through into the second) web era, almost entirely because it makes the barrier to onboarding so low as to be non-existent. PHP gets a couple of extra free shots in the arm
Loved this history down memory lane. I remember struggling with cgi-bin folders and execution permissions. Compare that to LAMP setup and .php files and mixed HTML/SSR its no wonder why php took off.
Quote Citation: beatworm.co.uk, “Perl’s decline was cultural”, 2025-11-20, https://www.beatworm.co.uk/blog/computers/perls-decline-was-cultural-not-technical