That seems like a lot of unnecessary maintenance to me.

I ported the program to Python when the Perl version was already fleshed out a bit. Keeping them in sync hasn't been that hard. After each update I run both versions on the same input file (resulting in my blog https://plurrrr.com/) and check with meld if there are any differences. This works very well. I am only a little worried that the Python code might contain some Perl-isms.

I disagree. It does a lot to help reliability and to find bugs.

It also means you have a completely decoupled backup system should anything go wrong with the primary.

I'm aiming to have at least one redundant component for every piece in the system I'm writing.

I did not notice that, thanks for pointing it out.