I started with Perl in the 1990s and well it was the only game in town for the things I needed to get done. Now as a semi-professional programmer (Temporary work and side jobs at work) I have learned to love Racket (Lisp Family), awk/sed and R.

Since I only do this less then full time my brain can't hold everything in it for Perl or similar languages. I can sit down with a Lisp and just work it out with the parts I know and have to look up things far less.