Somewhat longtime user of Perl (let's say, since 1994), mostly as a tool in my sysadmin career. I was partly hooked by how much easier/more powerful Perl was than shell s‎crip‎ting, and partly by Larry Wall himself, who made frequent appearances in the usenet Perl group(s). I always liked his humility and general helpfulness, also how we was committed to the idea that you could use Perl in whatever way was most useful to you. For me that means a style of Perl that's not too much different from shell s‎crip‎ts or perhaps the structured programming I learned in the 80s.

I'm trying to be open as much as possible to the kind of rigor that's often espoused here on Perl Monks and the object-oriented ways of doing things. But, truth be told, the farther I go in this direction, the less likely anyone that comes after me will be able to understand what my programs are doing, and that means they're more likely to be scrapped and replaced with something else. There are a lot more sysadmins out there without programming skills than you might imagine. I'm trying to find a happy medium, and then push out a little ahead of it.