Beginner's Language?

[raj]

>raj> Yes ! But unlike Perl, Mozart was DESIGNED  and did not grow by a
>raj> process of uglification / accretion.

>The way you say that, you make it sound like Perl was undesigned.

No.
However, elegance and pedagogic virtues were not what Larry had in
mind when he designed ( or rather, grew  ) it. Functionality and
"Magic" ( in the Wallesque sense ) were what mattered.

>Perl has a very specific and elegant design behind the scenes, and
>Larry Wall would be very offended to hear you say otherwise.

To quote Larry's foreword to your own excellent book:

( after talking at amusing length about how he melted the "beads" of
AWK, sed, sh , BASIC , Lisp and C together to form Perl)

"the magical bead eventually grew into this rather odd-looking Amulet
that you see before you today. See it glitter , almost like a pearl...

The Amulet isnt exactly beautiful though; in fact up close it still
looks like a bunch of beads melted together. Well, all right, I admit
it. It's downright ugly. But never mind that. It's the Magic that
counts. "