[retrobox]

Perl was one of the first languages I learned and also the first language I used commercially. I have a huge soft spot for it as a language. Still love Perl regular expressions like no other. I loved the camel book and its various footnotes with both humour and deeper knowledge on a topic.

[cushychicken]

Right there with you.

No language even comes close to Perl’s regex support. First class support for regexes as programming tools, and unparalleled speed.

[macintux]

I attended Sun’s road show announcing Java to the world in 1996 (IIRC) and when I asked about regular expression support, I was shocked that it not only didn’t have it built into the language syntax, it wasn’t even available in the library.

As a die-hard Perl fan, that seemed a ridiculous oversight for a language being promoted for Internet programming.

[cushychicken]

not only didn’t have it built into the language syntax, it wasn’t even available in the library.

Did not know that about the first Java release. That shit is bananas.

[abecedarius]

The Perl Journal had that flavor too. I hardly ever read it because I had no interest in actually coding Perl, but it was great to see this kind of culture on the magazine rack at Borders or wherever.