So, what's a genuinely *good* language? Something tha follows standards? OK, so who gets to create the standards, and why them? In the case of Perl and Larry Wall, well Larry invented Perl. He didn't follow the sed or awk standards (if any existed), nor did he adhere to C standards (and many exist). He took what he wanted, and made the rest up, and came up with something that is being used by a huge number of people. There *were* no Perl standards before Larry created Perl. Your criticism of Larry is much like dissing any other innovator for thinking outside the box. You don't innovate by adhering to standards.

Lucky for you, since you hate Perl so much, there are dozens of other programming languages that you can try. I'm sure you'll be able to find some that adhere carefully to standards, don't have troublesome innovations, and only color inside the lines. Try Pascal, maybe.

Much as I love Perl and PM, I don't think I'd sit around waiting 20 minutes for the page to download... But I suppose if you have nothing better to do, then 20 minutes isn't all that much.