I started using Perl in 2000 to rescue my diploma thesis (which was Java and C). I was working on a piece of software that was to communicate with another system that was the subject of another sister-thesis. The person working on the sister-thesis decided to abandon it. And I could really not demonstrate my work as it couldn't work standalone. In the place of the missing sister-system, I quickly put together something in Perl and was able to salvage the work and deliver my thesis. Compared to Java and C of the day, it felt like magic.
To this day, I have never seen anything that can even remotely approach the ability of Perl to prototype something out of thin air. Usually there is a gap between script-like tools (like sh, sed, awk, grep, jq, curl, etc) with which you can quickly put together stuff and a "real" language which usually needs scaffolding and preparation. Perl can do both, you can write excellent one-liners and you can also write complex software with libraries and frameworks and dependencies and tests.
To this day, I have never seen anything that can even remotely approach the ability of Perl to prototype something out of thin air. Usually there is a gap between script-like tools (like sh, sed, awk, grep, jq, curl, etc) with which you can quickly put together stuff and a "real" language which usually needs scaffolding and preparation. Perl can do both, you can write excellent one-liners and you can also write complex software with libraries and frameworks and dependencies and tests.