One of the things that has always drawn me to Perl (I'm from a C/C++ background) is definitely the community. As with all complex communities, there are the nay-sayers who will smack down any idea that is not theirs, but I've found that there are less in the Perl Community (unless you reference another language such as Python or Java to perform a task not easily implemented in Perl). In the C/C++ and Java worlds, I've found entirely too many people who are unwilling to help anyone, but are quick to defend their pedestal.

Usually when I've had to ask questions on Perl in the past, I could find the answers relatively quickly, often on sites like this, where there are several replies documenting different methods to accomplish the problem at hand. Before I even asked the question.

Now that I'm attempting a code conversion for our Win32 systems from a specialized language (WinBatch), I'm going to be faced with a million new challenges that haven't been answered yet. But I'm at least confident that many of them will be answered much faster than if I used C/C++. And without the hype.

The other thing I love about Perl is the flexibility of the language. I can sit down and prototype the functionality quickly and make it work. Python is the only other language that I can do that with easily, and for a good portion of what I do, it's still overkill. Java, C, and C++ fall prey to a few more cycles in development for me, even though I've been using them longer (which could be part of my problem).

So, the community, and the flexibility. That's why I think Perl is cool...