_They_ choose PHP because they don't have beards or excessive facial hair. It's all about the hair. Did the instructor have facial hair ? I bet she/he didn't.

In all serious though. I don't have extreme facial hair. And I picked up Perl myself (like most things), and a technical college I was at actually had a Perl class. Which I never was in, but attended and helped out at. The teachers were of a Unix/Linux background. I don't know if that holds any relavance. But one thing is for sure. Most *nix people like, and know the many purposes of Perl.

It's a System Admin, Web, and almost -everything else- language.I can't see myself ever using PHP for any of the things that I want or need to do. That includes web page creation.

Perl old. No longer in use. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

use Perl or die;

++ END OF MEANINGLESS RANT ++