"simple" is always relative.

In Perl it's very simple to do some basic string processing, uniquifying values through hashes and so on.

In C it's very simple to write some calculation which just need a million arithmetic calculations.

In Prolog it's very simple to search for relations in a graphs (for example determine cousinship relations between two people).

In many languages it's simple task to write a program or a problem that is mostly solved by a ready-made library already exists.

And finally "simple" also depends on how familiar you are with a language.

It's true, whether it is simple to do something in a language is, a lot times, determined by the libraries that are readily available.

Take this a step further, in today's world, it is not only about whether you have couple of libraries handy, often times it is also about whether you have a framework for certain jobs, this is particularly true for all web applications.

In the same webcast, it was jokingly (or not so much jokingly) mentioned that now people probably use 14 frameworks in one application. For example, in a ASP.Net web application, you may use entity framework for database access, jquery (as a framework) to ease javascript development, and don't forget that ASP.Net itself is a framework...

I'd expect that in the general programming community, the majority of the programmers would not pick Perl (because they either don't know the language, don't like the language, or have a different favourite language).

And I'm not surprised there are people that pick C.

Having developed code in C for fifteen years before discovering awk and then Perl, I know that for anything to do with file manipulation I'd use Perl, hands down. I can remember writing C utilities many times, writing argument parsing and file manipulation routines over and over again, thinking to myself, "This is stupid -- I haven't even got to the part that I want to do yet!"

Don't get me wrong -- C is an awesome language, and it's blazingly fast; but it's a bit like building a house using individual 2x4s rather than the pre-built Walls that Perl provides. :)

But maybe there are "pre-built Walls" for C also ?

I use Common Lisp whenever I can. If that is not possible, my next choice is Perl.

Update: Yes, I realize that this may not be popular on this site. :)

Anyway, when looking at Perl 6, there is a lot of Lisp greenspunning its way here. There is thus hope for conciliation.

Well, I'm an old hardware jock; so I tend to think the simplest solution to a simple challenge is to connect a piece of wire from the hot side of the battery to the load (and hope the load is already grounded). That approach can fall short of expectations in several ways, which is why we have more advanced methods for setting binary state.

If you feel that you must build your own wheel, then I heartily suggest Perl as your tool for most purposes. You can write a one-liner for simple, simple problems; a short script for not-so-simple problems; a longer script with a few modules for still somewhat simple problems; or a big honking script with any number of modules exhaustively tested by the Perl Community for simple problems that have outgrown their starter pot.