It's certainly easy to calculate the average attendance for Perl conferences.

I'm sorry, but you just made me lose my sense of humor, which is deeply regrettable.

When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.

When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.

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.

The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.