[user5994461]

Widely used is relative, Perl at its peak was used in relatively small applications and short scripts.

I worked at the largest US bank and had the unfortunate task to decommission the last Perl software. Doing a lot of archeology there was never much of Perl really, some short scripts here and there. One or two flagship applications in the early 2000 but they were rewritten long ago.

Looking at our python codebase however, that's ten of millions of lines of code covering all types of applications and all aspects of the business. It will still be there 30 years later.

The dependency to the interpreter and external libraries is a problem indeed. They're constantly shifting or getting abandoned under your feet. I wonder how this will be managed eventually.