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Perl is Sweet Sixteen
surflorida writes "Perl turned sweet 16 yesterday. 'Larry Wall released Perl 1 on this day in 1987, so today Perl is 16 years old. Happy birthday Perl! You can read more about the timeline of Perl releases in perlhist.pod and at history.perl.org.' Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license."
For once the "you belong in a zoo" version of Happy Birthday is applicable.
But too old for Michael Jackson. Go ahead, mod me down! Muahahaha! ;)
Better lock up the car keys...
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
I remember 87 like yesterday. I remember writing 87 for the date instead of 88 on my homework. Actually come to think of it, I was in 4th grade and now am in my mid 20's. Hmmmm
Maybe it was that long ago and time is just going by too fast.
I wrote my first hello world program usinb IBM BasicA then.
http://saveie6.com/
At long last. PERL is legal!
http://siokaos.org/
Only 2 more years until shes legal, boys ;)
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
it's no longer considered statutory...
My other sig is an import.
I could just imagine the kind of drivers license issued to Perl. First off, it would have a magnetic stripe, barcode, brail, and RFID encoded driver's license number on the back. The photo would be in the visual, infra-red, and ultraviolet spectrums. The license itself would be an actual 4d hypercube turning into your social security card, credit cards, gas cards, library cards, and translations of all the above into every language depending on the licenses orientation in space-time. In the event of emergency, the license would also be a flotation device and in the rare case of ending up on a desert island can be turned into a Swiss army knife and satellite GSM phone with GPS capabilities. Biometric identification built into the license allows it to change into the proper license for whoever is holding it. The license would be powered by a kinetic energy system similar to no-wind watches. It would also have a backup fusion generator, solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells, lithium ion battery banks, and be expandable for anti-mater generators once they become available.
Then you would lose it and it would be eaten by a snake.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Yes. but it's only allowed to execute code until 11pm...and its parents damn well better not find out that it forks around, because it needs parental permission to kill a child process(should it fail to handle variables safely.)
Oh, and the kernel keeps a shotgun by the front door just in case any Java applets come around asking if Perl can go to the movies...
Please help metamoderate.
Thanks to crying mothers telling sob stories of teenagers getting into crashes, in most US states, 16 now gets you a learner's permit, but you need to be 17 to drive without your parent sitting next to you.
It depends on the state. Take MA for example you can get your learners at 16 and license at 16 1/2...
Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license
hmm... i didn't know you needed a license to ride a camel
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
I guess we really can say Perl is sweet 16, never been KISS'd.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
This does nothing about the idiot drivers who aren't teenagers
It's just you.
I can get to it just fine. It also shows up on root servers.
We built a world-class business on the back of Perl. Nothing else would have done the trick.
THANKS LARRY.
It's not the mothers' sob stories. It's the facts. Teenagers have an extremely high accident rate. They are inherently bad drivers, every one of them. It was foolish of the state to allow me behind the wheel of a car when I was 16. I'm much better now that I know that "yes, you can die, asshole!" Let's rephrase that for the dense teenagers (all teenagers are dense) here in slashdot: You are NOT immortal.
BTW, my daughter is now a teenager and is doing the countdown to when she can get her permit and license. I highly recommend that in 2 years you stay off the roads. It won't be safe.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Update that... MA is 16 1/2 for a license if and only if you've completed a registered driver's ed course, otherwise you have to wait for 17.
i could teach your daughter what to do in the back of the car for a nominal fee.
Honestly, I don't buy that. Was I a bad driver at 16? Probably. If the age had been 18 would I have been a bad driver when I started then? Probably. Driving in this country is something that comes with experience and I didn't get much experience with a car until after I had my license. What is needed is a better way of training people before they get out on the road. Even then, practice through driving is probably one of the best ways to improve skills.
...
And before anyone ask's I'm 21. I went into the liquor store the other day for the first time just to buy something (because I could) and wasn't carded. And I'm tempted to go back and asked to be carded on the principle
Flamebait?!? What, are the Michael Jackson fans going to come out of the woodwork and hijack the thread?
:)
You know you laughed!
the icon of perl ..i.e. the camel along side the article. I agree it is not funny, but the above mentioned is the basis of the joke.
"Perl looks like an explosion at an ASCII factory" - I forget who said that.
:help the damned.
Here's a fun one. (Forgive me, I've had one too many Jack and Cokes). In VIM, enter
It'll come back with "There is no help for the damned"
Har har har. THat kills me. Time for another drink.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Or I could just kick your ass and give you a shotgun enema. How does that sound?
-- Will program for bandwidth
Only on slashdot, geeks make jokes about having sex with a programming language...
Maybe it can finally learn to speak english then ;^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Perl turned 16 2 days ago, on Dec. 18th.
Happy belated birthday, anyway.
My IT career started out with Perl on Linux. Thank you.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
I thought this was going to be about Woz's Sweet-16 interpreter for the Apple II (see bottom of that page), but no luck. I guess it's about 28 years old now....
darn, I dated myself.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
http://saveie6.com/
This means that Pearl is also legal to have sex with in most states. So, if you want to give Pearl a "pearl necklace," go right ahead. Just make sure there is no drinking involved as that might jam you up with the law
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Suppose Larry had used his considerable brainpower to make an interpreted version of C or C++, instead of making a completely new language?
i remember, oh, about 5 years ago, when i first met perl. it was the first language that i could actually do something in. even though i was using only a subset, mostly cgi stuff, and yet, i had POWER. i had several web sites up and running, data driven, mostly flat file stuff, but especially my school site, with 100 teachers, they could post homework, news, etc., we had a whole content driven site. all from perl with no database. i use java and python, as well as obj-c and cocoa, but damn, for me, there is still nothing like my first real love. perl.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I don't drive an SUV, and I don't suffer from road rage. On the other hand, I don't think it's out of line to want to rearrange the the brain stem of some jerk who messes with my daughter.
-- Will program for bandwidth
RBLs and high end spam filtering at the MTA , sparky.
Jeez, teenagers are even dumber than they were when I was one.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I couldn't afford a car for you to drive, but I have this really nice camel, chicks dig a camel.
Learn something new.
Wonder when that changed. In the early 90s in CA it was 15 for learner's permit, 16 for license.
About the same amount of time it will take them to finish Perl 6!
until perl turns 21.. i have never seen what a camel looks like drunken!
It's an important milestone...0x10 years old! Whoo-hoo!
(the bold was added by me)
here
You forget - we're the United States of America, that's states plural. The state I grew up in (and no, not that long ago) issued me a driver's license when I was not quite 14 years old. And some states require you to be 18 or something like that. It really seems incongruent, until you look at the reasoning. In extremely rural states, it's hard to operate the family farm if the kids can't drive.
Yeah, but geez, what's with getting so mad over some AC's stupid joke? "Hey, that anonymous person over the internet threatened to screw my daughter! I'm gonna kick his ass!" Besides, I don't think your daughter would wanna fool around with a pimply, overweight Slashdot geek anyway.
And on a side note, I feel sorry for your daughter when she actually finds somebody she would like to make love to (If she hasn't already). What are you going to do, stalk her and her boy(?)friend with a sniper rifle, waiting for the pants to drop? How about her wedding night?
I think the most productive thing you could do is to teach her about birth control, and rape and STD prevention. Oh, and don't feed the trolls.
Not trying to troll or flame here, just popping in my $0.2.
Oh, and happy birthday Perl!
vi ~/.emacs
$message = $age ge 16 ? "Legal" : "Illegal"; echo $message;
"and remember, as an added bonus, there is more then one way to do it.... ;-)"
And remember to "use protection;", you insensitive clod.
I'd hit it /bugger this isn't FARK :(
That's all true, but almost anything that you can do in any of those languages you can do in Perl with 1/4 the code and in 1/8 the time.
It doesn't have to be your parent with you in the car- just a licensed driver. Of course, I can only vouch for the states I've lived in (NY, PA, NJ).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Just this week I purchased Learning Perl 3rd edition. This is my first attempt at programming. As a systems admin I think perl will really help me out day to day. I have heard pros and cons to Perl as a first programming language but would love to hear the /. perspective.
After living in the Philadelphia metro area for seven years, I'd have to say it's a toss-up between the teenagers who think they're immortal and the maniacs who will kill you if you make them late for their anger management class. Red light running is a real favorite, and so far I haven't see a single teenager do it at least. Of course, it's hard to see who's behind the wheel as they go blasting past you at a busy intersection at 45 MPH and accelerating.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"And remember to "use protection;", you insensitive clod."
We are talking about perl right?
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe by the time Perl is 30, it (he? she?) will have mellowed out and won't be quite as unruly as it is now...
In 1987 I was just finishing off running a three year software development effort that had a peak staff of around 30 people and a little over $2M budget. The overall project (my part was about 40% of the the software) was a radar system for the Navy (ROTH-R) and was written in FORTRAN and ran on VAXes. Everyone was wondering who would replace Ronald Reagan in 1988 and the biggest thing going on in software was everyone was learning Ada.
There now. Hopefully, you don't feel so old anymore and you didn't even have to respond to some spam that promised to make you feel young again. BTW, I started using perl in 1992 (perl 2.0) after I bailed out of management.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
So by sweet sixteen you are implying that a language that many geeks use is female? this makes sense now.
touch perl
finger perl
mount perl
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
Some things don't get better with age.
...and you smell like one too!
Ha ha ha ha.
But seriously, I respect Perl, it's just that I can't get the damn syntax down.
In Soviet New Jersey, Perl has illegal sex with you!
Chris
I've been programming perl for almost a decade, after learning it for a system administration job at UnixOps at the University of Colorado.
For those who work in Linux, Unix, or MacOS, I have a useful collection of well documented perl scripts for manipulating data and metadata from the command line.
Most useful are newpl, which creates a full-featured template as a starting point for new perl scripts, and ren-regexp which can manipulate filenames on the command line using a chain of regular expressions. Happy birthday perl!
Michael.
Linux : Mac
I like perl, use it every day, but any language that allows source code like this should be, like, banned by the government or something, shouldn't it??
the statistics do support the assertion that the most dangerous time for a male (not sure if theres a race dependency) is his 18th year. And if he makes it to 30, he will most likely make it to 60.
You're totally right. Anybody who would fuck with a young girl deserves what they get.
By the way what's her AIM?
Sweet Sixteen is an older computer language designed by Steve Wozniak (see http://oldcomputers.net/byteappleII.html and http://www.fadden.com/dl-apple2/sweet16.txt) for the apple ][ and is a little less bloated than Perl.
Teenagers have an extremely high accident rate.
I believe that one of the main failures here is the conservativeness of driving schools. They believe the way to do things is to put teens behind the wheel and make em drive like grandmas, with the completely absurd expectation that they will continue driving like grandmas for the rest of their lives.
The fact is, they don't, and neither does anyone else. All of that driver's training is worth shit because accidents don't happen when a car is being driven normally; it occurs at the very edge of the vehicle's performance. Sometimes you may be dumb and on the offense, other times you are defending yourself because of another driver's mistake, but either way, if you don't know how your car handles at the limit, you may not do the right thing.
Saab used to give everyone who bought a new 9-3 Viggen a chance to drive it on a closed course with professional drivers (an intensive three day course as I recall.) Everyone I've heard who's been through the program said they learned more about driving there than many years of experience.
Expensive, yes, but a $500-$2000 investment in a professional driving training on a closed course like the one mentioned above is what our new drivers really need.
Not to mention that you get the added benefit of (potentially) getting all the high speed stupid driving out of the teen before they get on the road.
...how a primary Open Source project like Perl turns out to have been there long before this whole Linux thing?
:-); I just didn't realize this was true.
I mean "what's the story behind this", not "why could this happen". I don't have a problem with this (not at all
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Actually I don't find the special cases very confusing at all. Perl has a specific paradigm... its hard to understand without working on it, but once it clicked for me, it became the easiest language I work with, beating out Visual Basic, QuickBasic, C++, COBOL... Those languages(except QuickBasic) still have their advantages, but once you learn Perl, its easy.
Its learning curve can be steep however, but once you get there, it pays off big.
Gives a whole new meaning to "There's More Than One Way To Do It".
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
...I can't understand a thing that it is saying!
Not trolling! I love Perl dearly 8^)
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
"I'll waive my rights."
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Hell, in Hawaii, Perl would be old enough to have gotten married and have a kid with another one on the way.
God Bless America, eh?
Then orphans will be crying about their families, and cars will be outlawed.
Is it just me, or is listening to crying people a good way to get spectacularly bad advice in a courtroom proceeding...?
-----------------------
You are what you think.
The sensation of a car that's just not doing anything you tell it until it damn well pleases makes you more wary of a car than almost anything else. (As for the anything else: I fell asleep driving once, and let me tell you, I haven't even felt tired in a car since then.)
-----------------------
You are what you think.
It's not the mothers' sob stories. It's the facts. Teenagers have an extremely high accident rate.
Well, yes -- but without the sob stories, nobody would have legislated such a farce. So what was said was correct -- it was because of the sob stories.
There's not really a nice, overall statement that covers why accidents happen except "people aren't perfect". You're not perfect either, just scared. So scare your kid.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
People have often told me that French is, in some ways, more expressive than English. But, I think there is nothing about English that cannot be fixed.
Similarly, why didn't Larry put his energetic and brilliant expressiveness into C? C (and later C++) needs that expressiveness.
C and C++ Interpreters exist. For example, CINT C/C++ Interpreter.
I think it would be great if GCC had a switch or an add-on that could turn it into an interpreter. GCC already as most of the rest of the kitchen sink: "GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection, which currently contains front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada, as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++, libgcj,...). Further frontends are available."
An "ugly hack", as you say, it just a challenge waiting for a brilliant programmer like Larry to make it beautiful.
I think I have part of the answer to my question. I think Larry could not see into the future. I'm guessing he didn't realize that all languages either die or become complete. I'm guessing he might not have made Perl if he had realized that he would commit 16 years of his life to make a language that would lose its quick-and-easy aspect and become as complicated as any other.
I didn't do any serious programming until I was 30 years old (I wrote a handful of 100 line programs in Apple Basic when I was a kid). Because of my interest in the web, Perl was the first language I learned (this was before PHP came to dominate) but was able to learn it. Sure, there is a lot of built in magic in the syntax but it makes programming with it much easier and quicker. I've also done some work with Java and found it to be a huge pain in the ass to wade through the JavaDocs over and over again to do the simplest stuff. But with Perl, I can effortlessly code my own subroutine off the top of my head instead of relying on Java's painfully large library that may or may not have the code I need. And for more complex stuff, Perl has great built-in modules and CPAN. If a total programming newbie and hobbyist like me learned Perl, anyone can.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
roses are red, and ready for plucking,
you're sixteen, and ready for high school.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license."
So the Camel can drive now, cool. But, I'm sorry, he can't vote, drink, or smoke, and if we see him SELLING CIGARETTES(!) we'll hunt him down and try our hand at Chinese Camel's Hump Soup!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
It's a common fallacy that teaching someone how to race will magically make them safer drivers on the open road. Checkout the Institute of Advanced Motorists and learn that becoming a good (safe) driver takes much more than a couple of hours pretending you are Michael Schumaker.
I think the funniest thing about your retort is it got modded +1, insightful, haha
//FIXME: Bad
err, informative, which is even funnier.
I'm stupid when I don't get enough sleep...
//FIXME: Bad
Of the languages I've learned, quite a few have been from academic sources:
But I'd have to say that the class that helped me so much wasn't relevant to the language itself -- it was how you thought about the programming.
These days, resources are so cheap, that it's no big deal if it takes too long to run, runs out of memory, or is 25M of source on disk -- you just upgrade the computer. But in taking assembly, you had to learn the tradeoffs between code size, memory usage, and speed. That's helped me more than anything else, in my opinion, as it's helped me look at my work in a different light. If you understand how the computer's handling your code, you can optimize it. eg:
is slower than
You just have to think of your arrays in backwards order, or make sure they're not order dependent.
Reasons for the speed increase:
If you do it as
Doesn't solve the second issue, and it requires more memory.
The intro to Fortran class I took also stressed language independant concepts -- pseudocode -- breaking everything down into its component parts before you write it. I was never a fan of flowcharts, but I often have blocks of pseudocode in the comments of a perl or PHP script, so I can go back years later, and remember what I was trying to do.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
only two more years and we can shag her! ;)
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Thanks Mr. Wall for allowing me to spend three lovely months in Helsinki, Finland. And thanks Finland, you are unbelievably beautiful.
.Sig Generator because sentiment should not be auto-generated :-)
If anyone ever gets the chance to work for/with Nokia, do it, it is a nice corporate culture and if you get to go to Finland, you will not regret it.
For you language purists, if you use a small subset of perl, you can generate very clean and even simple code. It all depends on what syntax/features you choose. And, remember, how you organize your code determines how clean the program is anyhow; the language is just the vehicle for expressing logic, the program is the destination and *how* you get there.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
For true peace & happiness: www.mihr.com
Manual
There are a lot of reasons to love Perl, but the biggest for me has always been that in a language where the tight binding of many languages' features was commonplace, usability had to be built on the back of convention. This has lead to GOOD Perl code being far more usable, maintainable and, yes, beautiful than the good code I see in all but C (not C++).
Every other language I've seen has a far worse ratio of features to elegance. Even python, which is close in terms of both lacks that essential last mile of usability because ultimately it's a language that imposed a style and a set of conventional constraints early on (design) and never allowed the community to discover its best practices. Perl will continue to improve, but for the first time in language design, that improvement is truly a community effort, with nearly every change made for perl 6 having come from the community as RFCs, and only the bent through the crooked lens of Larry's vision for Perl.
In other news, Perl was recently added to the OED... somehow that really made me feel good. I dunno why
That's all true, but almost anything that you can do in any of those languages you can do in Perl with 1/4 the code and in 1/8 the time.
When I see a kernel in Perl on par with a BSD or Linux, then I'll believe you.
Remember to always use the right tool for the right job.
With all due respect (not much), thats bull bisquits.
:-)
One of the things I did during my later 20's and early 30's (back in the '60's & '70's) was a bit of go kart racing, with an outboard motor, water cooled and all, choice of fuels, you name it, running in what was then called the C Super class, which was for engines from 12.2 cm3 to 15.something or other. This cart was clocked at over 120 mph on a county road once.
All this in an old Gopher frame, not the lightest by far. Fueled and watered and ready to go it weighed about 180 lbs without me.
But that puppy taught me more about driving at the very edge of what a vehicle is capable of doing, and I still, today, at age 69, exercize those skills as often as I can just to keep me from getting rusty, something thats becomeing ever more difficult as the reflexes slow down with age.
Oh, I might point out that I have not remodeled a vehicle, on or off the road, for more than 10 dollars worth of scratched paint in nearly 30 years. We won't count the air dams on the late model stuff sliding over a concrete parking blockade, those things they have in every lot.
I've also covered half a million miles on 2 wheels, down twice, one cracked ankle, one broken rib. Yes, I like to "push the envelope" even at my age, but because of that early experience, I haven't punctured it and hurt anyone but myself.
My wife, I drive crazy because I drive ballisticly looking as far down the road as I can. As I aproach a slower vehicle, her "safety zone" kicks in and she is standing on the imaginary brake pedal on her side of the car, while I'm slowly oozing out into a hole in the left lanes traffic and slideing on by, all with nothing but a slight adjustment of the throttle to synchronize things.
She gives me hell for not using my turn signals, but if I'm moving 5 mph faster than the vehicle in the mirror, he quite frankly doesn't have the horsepower to accelerate into me. My turn signals are worthless to him because he cannot do anything about it anyway.
Now if that same vehicle is approaching, and I'm planning on using a gap in that traffic to effect my pass, then they get plenty of notice that I'm coming over, hopefully with enough throttle applied that I'll have completed my pass and pulled back in before I actually get in their way.
She took drivers ed, and let me tell you, her driving bothers me even worse than mine bothers her. She also remodels the van occasionally, with $500 or more damages, although the last 2 or 3 times really haven't been her fault. Maybe, after 15 years, some of my style is rubbing off on her. I'd like that, a lot!
So take yer attitude that one shouldn't ever explore the limits and go use it for what it is, fertilizer. That, and 30 inches of rain will raise 180 bushels to the acre where I come from.
--
Cheers, Gene
It is far easier to develop with an Interpreter/Compiler combination, when they both have the same output binary. It saves a huge amount of time. Some interpreters are really incremental compilers. They compile on demand when they see the source code is newer than the compiled binary. Microsoft's FoxPro is an example of this.
However, the main point is: Why not put all the good stuff into one language?
I find it laborious and tiring remembering the syntax and quirks and compiler bugs of several different languages.
Perl would now be allowed to work until midnight on school nights, and 1AM on Fridays and Saturdays. Perl could also work up to 44 hours a week, and his employers would probably take full advantage of this.
However, even though Perl can work until midnight or 1AM, he can't drive for another six months.
He's now completely legal in PA. If he ever decides to hookup with C, it's all OK.
Still no booze, smokes, or voting. Gotta wait for that.
I second the motion, learning the limits of the vehicle and yourself helps immensly when driving. I'm an ex-cop who thought was a pretty good driver up until I took the high-speed driving course as part of my training. We had to drive nuts in a skid pan, maneuver through a high-speed 5 mile course with lots of lane changes and hair pin turns all the while the instructor was in an identical car trying to run us off the road! When I got through that course I was amazed at what I could do with a car: I can safely take corners at 2.5 times the posted speed (but I don't, don't want to have to steam clean the car after my family poops themselves), I can threshold break while locating an escape route in a tight situation, and I can probably park my car in my garage while flying in off the street at 25 mph (but I don't want to try as it drips a bit of oil and it would be a bit slick on the front wheels). All in all, taking your vehicle out somewhere where you can really drive like an a-hole for several hours, learning the true value of being belted up nice and snug, would make many people much more proficient drivers.
That made me think that Perl would be perfect for a beginner's class. You can learn better how to program instead of learning a programming language, and leave the concepts of libraries, compilation, types, objects, etc. to more advanced classes.
This space intentionally left blank.
That's exactly what Larry's doing. Of course, his definition of "good stuff" is probably different from yours as is his choice of "one language".
how to invest, a novice's guide
It's such a shame that Java encourages you to comment your code. How the hell are you supposed to remain the only person who can understand your code, if you keep leaving instructions for other people?!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You're living in the wrong state, friend. She's legal in mine...
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
for($i=0;$i<4;$i++){print"hooray!\n"}
In my opinion, C++ needs all of Perl's pattern matching and text manipulation facilities. They should be part of the language. The String class is not enough.
I'm happy that someone else decides which language will be the standard, and will have all the capabilities brought into it. It's just that I don't like trying to stay current with multiple languages.
If you look at the structure of French, it is a mess. For example, verbs are irregular. There's no reason for it; it just grew that way. If you look at the structure of English, it is a mess. Many, many words are pronounced differently than they are spelled. Human languages weren't designed, they were just thrown together.
We don't need to accept haphazard design in programming languages. We can do better for ourselves.
My 0.02:
Perl is best suited for text-munging (e.g. logging, parsing), web stuff, and as glue code to make other things interoperate. It's got some lovely stuff like foreach and proper regexps that is missing from other languages. Perl also offers you a lot of flexibility in how you approach different tasks.
The downsides of Perl are a tacked on object model, and perhaps so much flexibility that reading other people's code can be difficult at times.
Some advice:
use strict;
if you're used to strong typing, and use -w on your shebang line to get verbose error messages (i.e. start your scripts with #!usr/bin/perl -w)
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling