Agreed. Professors aren't paid to familiarize themselves with tools and learn all the nuances of a language (with regard to the use warnings; vs. -w, perhaps the last time the professor had exposure to Perl was way back in the long long ago before it existed). If this is a comparative language course (my school has such a course that is required, and most professors teach Perl as well as other languages), then there is certainly no reason that he be compared to the gods. Some prof's just get stuck with courses, perhaps this one is an AI guy, or a distributed networks programmer. In either case, it sounds to me like this is either an elective course, a concentration, or a comaparative languages class, a similar topic was brought up a year ago about Perl being taught as a mandatory school, and the concensus was that not many schools require it.