I am constantly parsing reports and then generating commands to run from that. I learned Perl in the 90's and it still works great for that.
I have to code in Tcl for most of our EDA tools (chip design) but I still parse reports in Perl. The younger engineers use Python and I've learned enough but I really don't care. I'm not writing big systems or anything in Perl or Python. It's the Tcl code that has tens of thousands of lines because that is what the tools require.
Curious: do you also do script-writing in other languages? And just pull out perl for a subset of problems? Or are most things at the "bigger than a script" level for you?
I'm not here to judge. I still prefer to write my python scripts like it's the 2.7 days... (more effort goes to python "code")
Generally, if the script is more than a one-off, I will write in Python, since all the young seem to know Python, and very few seem to know Perl. There are two recurring jobs that I have not rewritten from Perl, one because "pack" is so handy.
The only other language I use much for scripting is Javascript, or rather Jscript, for our accounting department sometimes needs files munged for integration into Great Plains, and I can count on cscript being on the machine and running such scripts.
Perl was/is just so powerful, people have used to do all kinds of things that most people probably don't even have idea can be done. Its some what similar to the power of macros in vim/emacs. People(especially young) are often surprised you can just open vim on a ec2 instance and do something in 30 seconds, they were planning to spend hours/days doing using java+bash or something.
I have both seen and done, people build such extreme, big and hard things with Perl and so quickly, that I'm sure somebody without that context would find it hard to imagine. Im sure you can do in Python, anything you can do in Perl. But definitely not in the same time, not the same size and more importantly- not often.
Programming culture has been trading tool power for beginners ease for decades now, and the market is swamped with tools that appeal and work only for beginners not for advanced users.
In its hey days Perl programmers would do things in a weekend, what the neighbouring Java team had 12 people and a year to do. There is a reason so much was built in Perl in those days. But like most things, money increased, people had lots of time and budget to get things done. Beginner tools got used more often. Perl also got its reputation as a hard to use tool around that time.
But honestly I see so much manual drudgery these days. Its irritating to see that as a Perl programmer. There is nothing more sad that watching people do work, that must be done by a program.
I'm not sure how to answer that. Some can write a short, personally useful script. Some can do much more. Which are the crudest parts of Python, and which are less or not at all crude?
Languages have deep features. That's why people create new ones (except for PHP perhaps). You can write BASIC in any language you want, it's still BASIC.
Languages systems or environments have still other deep features themselves. The library or module systems in Python or Perl or Raku do not work the same.
Being able to write "a short, personally useful script.", is a great start. And does not count as "knowing Python" except for the purpose of inflated resumes. The clichés of complaining about "line noise" or WORN (write once read never) - since the fine article was about Perl - counts specifically as "not having learned Perl".
I am constantly parsing reports and then generating commands to run from that. I learned Perl in the 90's and it still works great for that.
I have to code in Tcl for most of our EDA tools (chip design) but I still parse reports in Perl. The younger engineers use Python and I've learned enough but I really don't care. I'm not writing big systems or anything in Perl or Python. It's the Tcl code that has tens of thousands of lines because that is what the tools require.