I realize the use of "ruined" is tongue-in-cheek, but I would change the perspective a bit. Did Perl really make us lazy? I say, no, it didn't. I think we've been lazy all along, but Perl just allowed the most room for our natural laziness.

Now when we use other languages, it feels painful. You have to work so hard, type so much, compared to working in Perl. When you've driven a sports car, compacts feel slower, and way less fun.

Perl has, by far, the highest thought-per-keystroke ratio of any language I've used. It's highly context-sensitive, the default variables and myriad builtins; it's one of the hardest languages to just skim if you don't know it. But once you learn the language a bit, more and more powerful statements are opened to you.
map, grep and reduce are confusing and difficult to understand as a new Perl programmer (at least from an imperative background). But once you get your head around them, you start replacing loops all over the place with them. And you want them so badly when forced to use another language.

In conclusion, I don't believe Perl made us lazy, and therefore impatient with other languages. I think Perl showed us a new level of concise, flexible power. Once you've used a table saw, you won't be happy with a hand saw.

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