etalon
/ˈɛtəlɒn/
noun Physics
noun: etalon; plural noun: etalons

a device consisting of two reflecting glass plates, employed for measuring small differences in the wavelength of light using the interference it produces.

I don’t see how that word makes sense in that phrase

That definitely raised an eyebrow for me. Admittedly I haven’t looked in a while but I thought I remembered perl being much more performant than ruby and python