https://www.wired.com/story/programmers-arent-humble-anymore-nobody-codes-in-perl/

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Still, I find myself returning to this strange language, and I think it’s because of the humility at its core. We need humility as we recognize that our world is more complicated than we might be able to comprehend, even or especially when it comes to the large technological systems of our own making (AI, cough cough). A single comprehensive theory or model won’t cut it in a world of exceptions and edge cases and raging complications. We need slow, stumbling approaches, and Perl’s evolved pluralism can show us the way.

Perl can even teach us about ourselves. If I had to choose a language that is furthest from Perl, it might be Lisp. Developed around 1960, Lisp is elegant, almost mathematical in its construction. The “Maxwell’s Equations of Software,” as its definition has been described—just to give you a sense of the esotericism. Perl is, of course, not that. It’s organic and sometimes maddening. For all its messiness, in other words, it’s a language of the people.

And that’s the thing about programming languages: They are actually for people; they can’t just be parsable by machines. In the classic textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, the authors make this clear: “Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” Yes, the joke is that Perl is “write-only”—but you can always tell it was written by human beings.

A Perl renaissance is, I admit, unlikely. But perhaps the lesson of Perl is timeless. It asks us to be less precious—and more human—when it comes to programming languages and their design. Only then might we be able to bridge the gap between us and the machines.