The one thing that I know Perl can do, and in my opinion no other language can do better, is to start small and grow. With Perl you can approach a problem and spike different parts of it very quickly and then you can reshape the code in many different directions and using multiple paradigms. This ability to iterate very rapidly with minimal loss and with freedom of testing out different directions is really unique to Perl. I don't think any other computer language has this.

Mojolicious captures this concept beautifully, and I think THAT is the essence of Perl, and that is is why is my goto language for everything.

IMHO goes way beyond TIMTOWTDI and I don't think ww are even able to describe it properly.

> This ability to iterate very rapidly with minimal loss and with freedom of testing out different directions is really unique to Perl. I don't think any other computer language has this.

This power must come with the responsibility not to miss the right time to refactor the code.

You have no idea how many times I had to save the day with some magic tricks and my clients promised me that they will fix the root problem and to never ever boilerplate that exceptional trick into a "common" technique ...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

The antithesis of this idea of course being PHP ... where everything is "built in" to the language, and they decide to change it from version to version apparently just because they can, and the resulting interpreter is HUGE. "There's only one way to do it, and in version X+1 that's now different."

I saw it as a (mildly) amusing pun on the confusion between snake and programing language.

No one believes Guido was behind the invasion of the Everglades ...