I didn't mean to say that anything I mentioned was bad, or that I could do a better job implementing it.

With Lisp, I said I was fighting it because I don't have the Lisp mindset. I'm sure if I spent more time with it, I'd really grow to like it. I know that Apache, mod_lisp, Hunchentoot, and Lisp itself are especially intricate and well-engineered. I can't imagine ever being at a level to implement even a piece of what the people behind those technologies have implemented.

I certainly did not mean to ding Rails. Far from it. When I was working with it, I was amazed at everything it does for you. I merely meant that I would rather work with something simple (again, relatively. By no means do I mean "so simple that I could do it, or that I even understand it") than use a framework like Rails (or maybe even Catalyst -- I've never played with it). I'm not saying that the MVC design pattern is stupid or overrated. I've played with it before in school and I actually think it's fan-freaking-tastic. I'm also not saying that I want to do everything myself -- if that were true, I'd have to make my own language, interpreter, OS, computer, transistor, etc.

I never said I understand the inner workings of Perl or that Perl is better than anything else. I simply said I like it more.

I do think Perl is a pearl. I make my living (as do most of the monks here, I'm guessing) by writing programs. Perl makes it easy for me to do that. That's all there is to it. No reading between the lines or taking this to mean that all other languages suck. Of course other people can get more done with languages other than Perl. That's fine! If I was going to make a multi-purpose robotic simulator that demonstrates a Q-Learning agent's ability to learn as it navigates and adapts to indoor and outdoor environments, I might not choose Perl as the language to write it in.