(Shrug...)

Have we somehow magically lost sight of the fact that Perl is nothing-more (and nothing-less) than a tool?

Perl ... Ruby ... PHP ... all of 'em ... are they really so amazingly different? I don't think so. And maybe, just maybe, we should “leave it at that.”

I happen to be both a tool-user (by profession, as we all are) and, in one particular fragment of our field, a tool-maker. Did I know what I was doing, ten-odd years ago? Heck, no. Did I “do it right?” Yes and know. If I had it to do all over ... sure. If you had given me ten-odd years of magical foresight, I would have done a great many things differently. (I would have, for instance, picked the right six numbers at the Lottery, and I'd be living in own Jamaica right now...)

But ... there comes a point when “a worthy tool” can no longer be viewed in isolation. When people start building things with “your” tool, and they start selling those things for money, well, the game has quite-permanently changed. It can never stop, and it can never go back.

Yes, there was indeed a time when COBOL was “shiny and new.” Those days of punched-card innocence have long since become entirely irrelevant. Perl is in much the same situation. Ditto Ruby and PHP, and whatever-the-heck comes after all of them.