I love any efforts to advance Perl and all involved but Ovid
does this charming and polite self-deprecating thing I see a lot
online in the language wars that seems contradictory and counter
productive in terms of rhetoric and mindset.
Perl is criticized for being too verbose and hard to read.
Perl is then compared to some other less potent language with
no sigils or lexical variables or lots of other cool features
that require traditional language concepts such as punctuation.
Perl is then berated for being longer and more
complex than the perl-for-idiots reinvented-wheel that has been completely
golfed, making it easier to read for an expert, but potentially much
harder to understand in practice--due to increased cognitive load
of having to keep all the missing punctuation in your head so the
language can appear to be "pretty" like makeup or plastic surgery
for your brain!
Almost every common criticism of Perl can
be turned around and touted as the feature it actually is.
Run this 3 point program to turn this thing around,
in your head, and in reality:
1. Perl's verbosity, and lack thereof, enhances understandability.
2. Perl sigils are the best invention since rn and patch;
Because they are so meaningful and context dependent;
Beautiful symbols everyone knows and loves: $, @, %.
3. Perl 5 is PERFECT (but there's always room for improvement)!