Heh, quite true. I posed the question because I was interested in what it is that makes Perl so "powerful". At work we are looking at reducing the number of programming languages we use (LotusScript, VB, ASP, Perl, PHP and Java).

We'll be getting rid of LotusScript (since we have pushed up against the technical limits of Lotus Domino in general) and PHP, leaving Perl for systems work and VB/.Net or Java for applications work. The argument is that there are no drag'n'drop design tools for laying out Windows screens (à la VBA, which, it has to be said, lets you knock out simple Windows apps pretty quickly).

And I realised that there are a number of things that set Perl apart: trailing commas and the quoteword operator and even heredocs. Once you no longer have them around, you realise how much they damp down syntactic noise. I'll miss this aspect of Perl the most.

I am also amazed how the votes for each poll item is currently more or less proportional to the textual length of the poll item. Seems the longer the description of the feature, the more people like it! I didn't expect that.