I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.

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.

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

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

Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right.

I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.

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.