Perl was about the fifth language I took on, but in the years since we met my use of Perl has surpassed that of all other languages I've used to date combined. I attribute my love for learning and using Perl to several things:

• It takes the fuss out of many things that other languages spend all their time fussing over.
• Most of the books I've found on Perl have a wit, enjoyment, and enthusiasm to them not encountered in the 1200 page doorstop books on other programming languages. (Have you ever read Programming Windows with MFC? If you have, you know what I mean.)
• The community seems to share the passion, as well as sharing many of the ideals (such as testing, code re-use --CPAN--, the quest for improvement, and "get the job done") that I value.
• CPAN: The language is CPAN, the syntax for using CPAN is Perl.
• Did I mention the testing culture?
• PerlMonks, Perl Mongers
• Immense flexibility through simple means: Our OO system(s) and the power of blessed refs, higher-order functions, regexps as syntax rather than as bolt-on routines, nitty-gritty symbol table magic, XS for those occasions where it's useful, TIMTOWTDI (without shame), and so on.

I do enjoy C++. I guess I would consider it my next favorite. I find it fascinating, though, that C++11 has made major strides toward acquiring language features that Perl has had for 20 years.

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