For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.

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

Some of modern engineering is necessary to good art. But I think of myself is a cultural artist.

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.

Information wants to be useful.

What you'll need most is courage. It is not an easy path that you've set your foot upon.

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.