Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.

Just don't create a file called '-rf.'

Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.

If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant.

There's many scripting languages in the world, Perl is a little bit special because it is based more on some ideas from the way natural languages work.

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 only reason [not to use] perl is that some sysadmins don't allow software that they didn't pay for. By all means, let them send me money if it makes them feel better.