Perl is a little older than Python. Most of the ideology of Python was a reaction against Perl (https://wiki.python.org/moin/TOOWTDI). Python has always tried to be as good as Perl on everything. I use very much Perl for what it was intended: parsing files (often log files and configuration files), producing reports and launching commands (shell replacement). I have tried to use Python for the same tasks, in particular when some of the files were in xml (xml parsing in Python is nicer than in Perl). Regular expression usage is easier in Perl where multithreading is easier in Python. IMHO, the main handicap of Python vs Perl is the lack of autovivification. Python is very good for teaching (whiteboard interview) or as a scripting language around some big libraries (like tensorflow). At my work, the small glue scripts are almost always in shell or in Perl. The Python applications are being rewritten in Java because of maintenance issues (mainly caused by lack of proper typing). Python does not rule here.