I find it ironic that Larry would invent a very large language that very few could be reasonably expected to master and then says that you don't have to master it... :-)
But I think that Larry is right. You can get things
done while knowing remarkably little Perl. But there
is a lot of Perl to learn, and learning it brings
benefits. There is a lot to learn about programming
in general, which will likewise bring even more
benefits. You don't need that to find it useful. But
without it you will repeatedly shoot yourself in the
foot, and you won't even know you are doing so!
That is life.
Neither Larry Wall or anyone else can make learning
more a useless or irrelevant thing to do. (Though
some - in particular Microsoft - try to market
products that they claim have done so.) But you can
certainly define a useful subset of the language
which you stick to and can readily bring someone else
up to speed on. There is sometimes great value in
doing so.
