Though I'm far from a career programmer, I think most people here (whatever the background) share a need for mental exercise of some sort. It is possibly the ability to solve problems quickly and imaginatively that most distinguishes humans from other species, and especially the driver to improve upon previous solutions. I'm not counting the homework posters that exhibit a need to avoid mental exercise in favour of elbow bending and the like of course.

My uses for Perl are almost exclusively to make time-consuming tedious and often therefore error-prone tasks into quicker, more reliable and repeatable actions (while you could say that about any Perl code, my applications could almost always be done on paper - it's hard to say that about CGI). I could in many cases give such tasks to junior staff who would carry them out the painful way, but it is much more satisfying to automate them. Certainly there is frustration, but beyond every frustration there lies the reward of accomplishment.

Perhaps I'm looking for frustrations to generate rewards for myself! Whatever the reason, "I love it when a script comes together"!

I also love a good cup of coffee though...