Better yet.

In your typical statically typed language, what's typed is the name of the variable. If you are given an anonymous bit of data you have no indication as to what it is. In Perl, OTOH, you can find out whether it is a scalar, array, hash, anonymous code, or one of the more arcane types by looking at the data itself, without knowing about its name.

Static typing in Perl is therefor likely to work much better than in your average conventional language.

Makeshifts last the longest.