The point is, like PHP and FORTRAN it got millions of people programming who otherwise wouldn't have -- precisely because of its loosey-goosey philosophy (and l

The point is, like PHP and FORTRAN it got millions of people programming who otherwise wouldn't have -- precisely because of its loosey-goosey philosophy (and lack of default strictness). And because it could be used to do some seriously powerful stuff, and get it out the door much more quickly than in the C/C++ world (arguably its only real competitor at the time). Of course over time, these same people learned to program better, and its looseness and general wackiness grew into a liability. But the important point here is: language design decisions (just like product decisions) aren't so much intrinsically right or wrong; but right or wrong at certain times. In its heyday, Perl was, for many people, definitely the right way to go.