Programming is about possibilities. And I couldn't agree more with sporty: We are living in a harsh world; most people cannot even stand the idea of "possibilities" and "differences".

The professor and the TA mentioned are only two examples of many. But their behaviour shouldn't be perplexing considering the loans and donations given my big corporations. On the other hand, one should realize that most universities are producing employees. And the market demands some tools(knowledge some calls it) to be garnered by "graduates." Matlab is a good example of such a tool.

I also want to point out a hardware issue. Physics and engineering departments do a lot of number crunching by using specific hardware connected to a computer. These hardware equipments come with special C/C++ libraries. And even there Perl gives us options, but I have never seen one trying.

To the stereotypes: In our way of saying TIAMTOWTDI. And for those who thinks Perl is for text parsing, I would show CPAN. I myself occasionally parse text, and use Perl 15 hours a day.