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> Perl is a wonderful language once you get over the fact that a slightly quirky set of syntax and embedded regular expressions have a tendency to make it look like line noise in the wrong light. Once you're used to it, it's a hell of an expressive dynamically typed language with a huge set of libraries and classes available for it.
It is beyond intellectually dishonest to not put this in context; you've linked elsewhere in this thread to Ovid's obituary, from which I'll quote:
> Third, he wasn’t a bigot. Far from it. He stood up for LGBQT+ rights. He didn’t care about your ethnicity, religion, or national origin. He was accused of philosemitic antisemitism[0], but while he admitted to me that he had hurt someone, he was bewildered by it. He thought he was making a joke; the person hearing it (someone else who I also respect) heard bigotry. For the record, I don’t think Matt was antisemitic, but I realize that this is such an emotionally-charged topic, that some will disagree.
Another former colleague who is way more talented than I am emailed me privately to express a similar sentiment.
You'll find Matt's indirect influence in things like SQLAlchemy, and chunks of the enduring parts of the javascript ecosystem as well. He was known in the perl community, but his unparalleled thinking skills have a much wider indirect influence