I think it's also partly due to some of the people who got involved rather early, in the formitive stages.

That makes sense. Once a community is established, you get the "birds of a feather" effect. After all, you humans (Heh!) do tend to hang out in groups with similar taste/style/etc. (OK...I think I'm taking this pseudonym just a little too far!)

I wonder if it started at Larry? After all, there are quite a few nice languages to play with out there, but in my experience, while Perl has ugly syntax (e.g. @{$foo{$gnord}}) it has a great community surrounding it (CPAN, PerlMonks,...). Many times, when I have to get something done quick, I first check CPAN to see if it's already 90% done for me. If so, I start writing it in Perl. Otherwise, I then look at the problem to see if hashes/regex/... are going to be helpful. If so, I again start writing it in Perl. Otherwise, I start coding in C/C++ (which is what I still think in).

--roboticus

(Who, in fact is pink and squishy under the gears and wires...)

2006-04-17 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'A Cautionary tale for Newbies “Monks don’t bite”'