the main reason for Perl is Larry's laziness, all the Flintstones examples.
Not quite: in $Larry's words the three virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris. AIUI it's a synergy amongst them that makes them virtues. Or at least between any two of them. I exceed in laziness. Indeed I'm so lazy that I often do some tasks in inefficient ways because I don't feel like writing that much more code that would make my life easier, and it all ends up taking more time than necessary, overall. But if I'm short of time, impatience gives some more motivation. Exactly that needed to write that *code*. So could do hubris. And hubris alone, without the other two, could make you want to do something completely different, like using some highly bloated and programmer-time consuming language just to boast about it. And impatience alone? Well, maybe it could be enough to make one pick up perl, but perhaps also some other RAD tool that wouldn't make one so proud of using it...