DCT Jared Smith <jared@dctkc.com> writes:
> [...] what I mean is I thought that Perl was the fountain from which springs
> all other contemporary languages... its what I still think, in fact.

Hmm.  Are there *any* other computer languages that could be considered to be
derived from Perl?  Parts of Ruby, maybe.  A small bits of Python perhaps.

The biggest contribution of Perl (and a big one it was) was a concrete
demonstration that interpreted languages could be a fast and practical way to
get things done on Unix.

If I were going to pick a fountain, though, it'd be Lisp, at least for
interpreted languages.  Lisp was the archetype for those that followed, and
(unfortunately) none have yet to match it.

Mike