If there's a particular problem that Perl is trying to solve, it's the basic fact that all programming languages suck. Sort of the concept of original sin, applied to programming languages.

How do you type it? With your keyboard.

There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs.

Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.

> (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.) Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.

Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches. :-)

If you try to solve a hard problem, the question is not whether you will use a powerful enough language, but whether you will (a) use a powerful language, (b) …