From Larry Wall, creator of Perl, in 1995: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.perl.misc/msg/4ea8ddd4dfcf8a9b

* Learn it once, use it many times

You learn a natural language once and use it many times. The lesson for a language designer is that a language should be optimized for expressive power rather than for ease of learning. It's easy to learn to drive a golf cart, but it's hard to express yourself in one.

Technorati Tags: perl, philosphy, programming, larrywall