Pagelib Retrospective

I have always been in love with magic: one of the first languages I taught myself once I was old enough to understand what I was doing was Perl, and it fit me like a skin-tight sci-fi spacesuit that we thought we were all going to wear in the future, back in the 1980's.  Steve Yegge's rant about Perl was entertaining, but I can't say as I identified with it much, since references weren't hard for me, nor do I have his problem of forgetting everything when I don't use the language for a while.  Maybe I don't drink enough.

Still, being in love with magic and DWIM doesn't mean that there aren't any hazards.  It's rather like fairy-tale magic, which can result in nasty, surprising, unexpected consequences if used without the utmost care.  This is a story about me exercising a complete and utter lack of care, utmost or otherwise.