[antitrust]

I agree. Perl is great and often the fastest way to git 'r done, especially across multiple operating systems.

Perl got a bad rep for two reasons. First, writers of boutique languages wanted a reason to feel good about themselves. Second, certain segments of the Perl community (I won't name names) insisted on writing obfuscated, baffling code that read like line noise from a modem.

The Perl community counteracted this, but there were still enough of these people out there to give it a bad rap.

In the meantime, if you're a Perl programmer who can write functional, efficient, clean and readable code, there's no shortage of stimulating work.