I love Perl - the syntax, community, Larry Wall's writings and The Monastery. Occupationally I'm forced to write Ruby for a living these days but Perl's influen

I love Perl - the syntax, community, Larry Wall's writings and The Monastery. Occupationally I'm forced to write Ruby for a living these days but Perl's influence is there and enhances my appreciation or Ruby. I came into programming after reading in the Dreaweaver Bible that you could extend the search facility with regular expressions. Jeffrey Friedl's monumental Mastering Regular Expressions was listed for further reference and I was hooked. Perl was the natural language to learn if you were inspired by regexen and wanted to create dynamic websites back in the early 2000s so I sought-out Larry Wall's Programming Perl. That book is such a joy to read. I still dip into it today just for the quality of the writing ... and a little nostalgia. Take time to really grok Perl and you may find the soundbite swipes at Perl don't make sense any longer.