A good messenger expects to get shot.

[Perl] gives you the STDERR filehandle so that your program can make snide comments off to the side while it transforms (or attempts to transform) your input into your output.

Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.

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

We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types - in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor.

Don't wear rollerskates to a tug-of-war.

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