Excellent formatting! I was getting very tired of reading "There's a level in hell reserved for.." before every point in the preceeding posts. I recommend everyone adopt this format or at least something along the lines of TALIHRF.. (which is FRHILAT spelled backwards! Wait, that doesn't mean anything... ). Anyways commenting on formatting isn't enough substantial content for a post, so I'll proceed to off my insights on your (as of yet unread) points:

people who confuse the usefulness of a language with whether they personally like it

I concur. To expand on this slightly I should mention this especially applies to highly specialized languages and those in a different paradigm than the programmer is used to. For example, someone who has only programmed in c, java, and perl may think prolog is entirely useless while someone extensively involved in AI programming may think it's the best thing since beer with skittles. Moral of the story: you haven't programmed everything yet (if you have, I have a job for you), so you don't know how useful a given language could be. Oh, and 5 points off for referring to python programmers as zealots (python rocks!).

people who sneer at perl because it is "just a scripting language" instead of a "real" programming language.

Ah, the age old question of Do scripters suffer discrimination? (it's a slashdot link, don't bother). Well, sadly scripters will always be second to us real programmers. Disregard all you here about "programming is programming" the only people who say that are TCL programmers anyways. Real programmers use real languages, like Python and Perl ;-).

the decision to not include a proper switch statement in perl. foreach etc. may work, but it looks like an ugly kludge to me (or at least ugly).

I group switch in with goto as ugly, unmaintainable, brute methods of programming. Perl's a very high level language, use it like one!

vi

And emacs, yuck, talk about being left in the 70s. Use kate, take back the mouse!

software patents, the people who grant them and the people who apply for them

Do not blame those who apply for them, they can't pass up the opportunity when there competitors have it as well. The problem lies with those agencies that grant the patents out of ignorance.

people who insist perl is never the right tool.

I disagree.

people who insist !perl is never the right tool.

I disagree ;-).

Okay, now I'm just getting silly. Nice post and goodnight :).