I've always liked playing with code, to look into little logic and math problems that catch my fancy. Perl was very easy to get into, and has been extended in so many directions, I've hardly lacked for a solution just waiting for me to find it.

Then of course, I started using it in my $work; and soon it became critical. I've been waiting 3 years at my $position=q/current/; for our $Software_Group; to automate some database stuffing/munging, and they just keep refactoring everything after delivering the same functionality again. I've lost track of how many languages they've used. Every new summer intern brings along some new language and starts coding in it. Whe s/he leaves, as soon as it needs updating, it's trashed. (Students have so little respect for their peers' coding skills, but sometimes such disrespect is earned.)

So I get stuff done, other folks borrow some of my tools and get a lot done, still others wonder how it's done, and anyone left over doesn't even know what's going with their data, because they never see it. Funny thing is,

our @Group_Goals;
push @Group_Goals, qq/No Scripting!/;

sleep 3;

say qq/WTF?!/;
[download]

Now push @Company_Wide_Software_Organization, $Software_Group; so their responsiveness has declined, while their paperwork and meeting overhead has increased. I think they have to login on Saturdays just to play with code.