Obsession? No - it's not an obsession! Perl is not CGI-only language (but i know that there are people out there who want others to think that way).

What Perl really is (IMHO):

1. Culture
2. Community
3. Technology
4. *something* that we enjoy

What Perl is not (IMHO):

1. It's not another Web plug-in
2. It's not ment to be Web utility (even if it is used this way)
3. It's not to be underestimated (!!!)

What do i use perl for?! Most important - management utilities, remote administration and monitoring, data gathering and analysis. Less important - common system tasks (fining files, etc) and managing my Web servers (dynamic content with DBI and some base web-utils).
Although i often do some CGI scripting and (yes, yes) i do it with perl, becouse it's efficient and simple. I have many small scripts (~90++, and about 1/4 of them are cgi's) to do the dirty work for me.

Conclusion: I know some basic rules about Java programming, even sometimes use PHP (if i really have to), but i can't do anything about one thing... Perl fits best to *all* of my needs (computer/software related of course) ;->

Greetz, Tom.