Haiku, in its purest (?) form, deals with themes of nature, and usually involves some sort of contrast. More than a 5-7-5 syllabic scheme, it requires one to condense a contrasting idea into 17 syllables. That being said, anyone can write a 5-7-5 poem, and no one's going to tell them it's *not* haiku. It's easy to learn, and you can learn to write it as well, or as basic as you want. Perl is famous for allowing programmers to write some pretty amazing programs in a very small space. On the other hand, newcomers ( like myself ) can typically write programs that are 3 - 4 times larger than they need to be, and folks in the perl community don't scoff, they only offer suggestions. So perl allows all levels of coders to refine their style as much or as little as they want. Perhaps folks who look beyond the heuristics of a solution, and seek the most elegant solution are naturally drawn to a form of poetry that does for language what perl does for programming. I think Perl and Haiku both are geared toward providing the most from the least in their respective domains ( does that make any sense? )