> ... Perl existed; nobody thought of it as a real interpreter that could be used to construct complicated things any more than Awk was ... I can't help but to

> ... Perl existed; nobody thought of it as a real interpreter that could be used to construct complicated things any more than Awk was ... I can't help but to gently interject here. By 1997, I'd been programming for some time, and there certainly were people who consider Perl suitable for programming in the large, and there were certainly big projects so written. While I disagree with the specific word 'nobody', I agree with the sentiment: Perl was widely considered to be only useful for 'small' things at the time. Widely, but not exclusively.