"First: Larry is insane."<p>As cdoxsey says, this as uncharitable, however it's not without a grain of truth. He's a bit of a loon, but a lovable loon.<p>That being said, what he helped add to the technology ecosystem is as important as GNU/Linux. Perl is remarkably expressive, and I've found in my 18 year IT career that no other single tool has paid me back as much for investing my energy into learning it, both in better "kung fu" (than you Ringo Langly), and also in plain old cash-money.<p>It's worth adding to your bag of tricks, even if you feel, as the article's author does, that the docs are unwieldy, the community is filled with zealots and cults of personality (to Larry himself, as well as to Merlyn and his ilk), and the syntax is irritating. It's still worth your time. If you invest enough in it to grok the language, you __WILL__ be a better overall developer.