Wow - I use a lisp, but this argument is awful. Saying you can really quickly whip up something that works in Perl is an overwhelming recommendation. That the subsequent code in unmaintainable is a relatively tiny disadvantage.

From the linked-to post: "...the language rewards idiotic behavior... you can commit any dirty hack in a few minutes in perl, but you can't write an elegant, maintainabale program..." Sound familiar? That's the mating call of statically typed language programmer and the top-down 'software architect'. That's bad. And I'll admit, Scheme's libraries (I use Scheme) are in practice somewhat statically typed and fussy, which sucks.

I've never used Perl - maybe I should. BTW, is Ruby really just as good for quick 'duct tape' work and hacks? My very limited experience with Ruby made me think it was good, but not extraordinarily handy.