Perl encourages this style because there is little cost to changing your mind. In other languages you must decide what you want beforehand, because it costs alot just to move a few code segments around or change the return result's type -- let alone change the fundamental flow or structure of the whole program.

As an additional note, Perl comes out quickly from the keyboard to the computer -- quick enough that you can even have time to do a complete rewrite when the first becomes your colliquial 'crawling horror' (nice :) ).

Of course, this doesn't make other languages bad, it just makes Perl easy :) .

Ciao,
Gryn

p.s. I think it should be mentioned that this feature of Perl is best used with a little bit of conciousness. It is too easy to program badly even without Perl to help you :) .