If you follow me and read some of my past posts, you know that I generally talk about correcting weaknesses. This is for 3 main reasons:

1. There is so much room for improvements
2. Perl has bad reputation and it is not deserved
3. You could have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows it...

I heard one time that in relationship we finally end up loving our partner for "defects", well I'm not sure it's true and if it applies for programming languages 😀

What is obvious is that Perl programmers love Perl for its strengths and that's all!

In current situation, Perl strengths are more what make people enjoy and stick with Perl when weaknesses are what make people stay out of Perl... (some sort of contrary analysis could probably be valid for some javascript frameworks or other programming languages, hype but then dreaded from users).

Finally, trying to work on weaknesses can also be seen unnatural because at some point that's not by hazard if they became weaknesses. It means they are not really in the DNA of the Perl folks (and it’s also a good thing, after all we love Perl for its DNA).

It could also happen that working on weaknesses could weaken strengths.

So according to you, should Perl focus on its strengths or try to work on its weaknesses?

Some strengths according to me: extreme compatibility, portability, smart interpreter, quality, toolchain, sysadmin...
Some weaknesses according to me: reputation, boilerplate, web presence...