Perl is one of those different things to different people kind of languages, I believe I was probably just expressing a point of view where i couldn't c the wood for the cc's, not trying to detract from PDL at all, merely trying to understand better what perl is and how to use it.

I watched a lecture recently and there was a quote that kind of made sense to me regarding this, their view being that perl could be seen as a compiler for compilers. Unfortunately i cannot recall the identity of the speaker.

I like things working fast so thats great, but i also like understanding how things work, mainly so that im not replicating work uneccessarily.

One of the main areas im tryng to differentiate from is the assembly/machine code/c/perl/xs relations and pipelines and now of course PDL being thrown into the mix. Im sure once I understand what it is that is going on i'll be more relaxed about what im doing.