So we'll steal their ideas, perlize them, and end up surpassing the originals.

Regexes are someplace where this "steal and synthesize" philosophy has worked so well. Perl's syntax has been all encompassing yet revolutionary, so much to the point that the things Perl copied have come around and copied Perl. It's interesting to see Perl as a filter, gluing together cultures - operating systems, individual languages and tools all stealing from Perl, but really stealing from someplace that was outside of their field of vision.

I think that it should also be noted that Perl has gone from stealing ideas abut regexes to making them up before anybody else does. Regexes as a whole (outside of Perl, as well as in) need a serious cleanup, and this is a place where we've taken all these ideas and synthesized them, and now realized that we need a whole new language for expressing that synthesis. I say "feh" to those who balk at Perl 6 regexes - even if we don't get it right, someone has to try, and Perl has always been about the dirty jobs.

Light a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Catch a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchet