I also notice that there is a long-standing tradition in programming of celebrating crazy projects that no sane person would emulate.

Finally I submit that Perl is not intended to be a "good language". It wilfully ignores many widely accepted rules of good language design. Its strengths lie in other areas, such as a strong community. Indeed my current suspicion is that in true "Worse is Better" fashion, some of the design decisions that superficially look worse, help it become better in the long run.

And certainly an open invitation to play would be one of those design decisions...