[pwang]

Perl predates Python by 4 years, which is not a whole lot given they're both 20+ years old now.

By "flavor of the moment", I was not referring to Perl, but rather to all the "compiles-to-JS" type stuff.

Merely comparing package repository sizes is not any indicator of quality or future prospects. Once you're beyond a few tends of thousands of packages, the bases are basically covered.

The biggest ding against Perl is the readability and maintainability. For scientific and data analytics oriented code, generally written by non-programmers who do not understand good software development process, Perl is frequently way too much rope.

Coolness has nothing to do with Python's popularity. (Unlike e.g. Rails which soared to popularity as a "Non-Java" way to do web apps, and then became a bit of a victim of its own success.) The scientific Python people I know all moved to Python from Matlab, C, and Perl because it made them more productive.