Pearls

I was told Perl was some complicated masterful thing that was hard to learn and puts python to shame

easier then basic to learn and exact same functionality... am i missing something

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_typing
A programming language is said to use static typing when type checking is performed during compile-time as opposed to run-time. Statically typed languages include C++, Haskell, Java, Perl (with respect to distinguishing scalars, arrays, hashes and subroutines)