It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.

Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.

Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention.

Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets screwed.

I'm not too concerned about the future of Perl after me, because I see how these people are interacting with each other and even when I'm not there, they are helping each other and solving each other's problems in a way that I could not do, even if I were there.

As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer.

The young think they are immortal, and are determined to prove otherwise.