I write some new Perl/Gtk application a couple times a year. And I use it for automating basic things almost daily. I bet lots of people chose to write in perl for personal projects. It just isn't very visible.

But not that many. And that's why Perl is still Perl. Popularity brings change which means old code stops working.

Perl code from the year 2000 still works in a perl interpreter+libs today. And perl code written today still works on perl interpreter+libs from the year 2000. That incredible stability and reliability is what makes it great. Write something then use it 20 years later and everything just works anywhere you try to run it.

That's why I chose Perl.