Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted programming language known for its powerful text-processing capabilities and flexibility. It was originally developed for system administration and web development tasks, featuring a rich set of built-in functions and regular expressions. Perl's motto 'There's more than one way to do it' reflects its emphasis on practicality and developer expressiveness.
Developers should learn Perl for tasks involving text manipulation, data parsing, and automation, such as log file analysis, report generation, and web scraping. It is particularly useful in bioinformatics, system administration, and legacy web applications (e.g., CGI scripts). Perl's CPAN repository provides extensive modules for rapid development, making it a solid choice for quick prototyping and glue code.