Hello my fellow Monks.

I've been absent the last few months. I have, unfortunately, been forced to submit to the snake cult.

I resisted. I resisted for as long as I could. I even thought I might get away with continuing to use Perl until my "retirement" from corporate life that is hopefully less than a half decade away. But alas, the pervasiveness of Python, and it's success in becoming the first language of choice for so many engineering schools for the last several years has backed me in to a corner, and the zealots have come for me demanding I convert or be burned at the stake for heresy. I am in effect being told I can no longer write scripts in Perl and must adopt Python so that others can read and modify my code. :-(

Our young engineers use Python. Our technicians use Python. All our automated tests and data analytics are now written in Python. I had such hope when I joined my current company. They even had an old learning course on video originally taught in person by someone who is now one of our VPs called "Test Automation with Perl Scripting"... but it's almost two decades old now.

Sadly, I simply don't have the capacity at this point to maintain any sort of proficiency in two scripting languages. Frankly, I barely have enough for one. So I am now forced to type their indoctrination mantras in the devil's own parseltoungue. Pity me, for your brother monk has truly fallen from grace.

I may leave the monastery now, some seven years after I joined your order, but I have decided to leave it as I have lived in it. With a bit of my own awkward brand of humor via one final Perl Poetry entry from the Monk who fancies himself a drunken poet.

To those of you who have helped me over the years, or made me laugh, or raised my spirits, I sincerely thank you. Be well, live long, and prosper. :-)

- perldigious