To those new to programming Perl is Power. I can express myself in a month in Fortran or COBOL, in a week in pascal or C, in three days in C++. Yes, I'm old. I used to take my source deck down to the keypunch operator. I've kept up well. But . . .
In a day, or an hour, I can express myself in Perl. I thought I knew how to do this stuff. Now I know that I will be forever learning.