Long story short: I was systems architect on a project to distribute, install and maintain the software stack, from the OS on down, to 600 wan connected servers and their 40,000 clients.

One of my team suggested Perl (4) for use for one small part of the distribution & installation monitoring system. At my request he showed me half a dozen example scripts culled from the web for my appraisal/education.

On the basis of a quick read-through of the first 3, I dismissed it as "read-only line noise", I turned him down and mandated Rexx be used. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

I took a look, realised that I was out of my depth as far as the Perl code was concerned and paid a friend to deal with the distant relation's problem. (It was in reference to this problem that I found this place--see my early posts!).

Despite taking the easy route (Never do paid work for family!), I was intrigued enough--and uniquely, had time enough--to cause me to investigate this PERL stuff further.

My conclusion: Perl is unique! Amongst the hundreds (if not thousands) of computer languages, it is unique. In that it favours Practicality over either purity or elegance.

After suffering the whims and capriciousness of a dozen or more "bosses" over the preceding 20+ years, I found home. At last! A language that preferred practicality over purity; solutions over dogma.

I was more than intrigued. I was hooked!

The brief was simple: Spider the web (all of it, though it was smaller back then); digest it (as in MD5); index it; and categorise it.

The theory was good. The implementation (in Perl) was good. The finance was bad. (The bubble burst!)