That depends on whether you are the guru, able to exploit a rich syntax to create compact and elegant code, or a novice struggling to comprehend what may look like line noise to you. Perl's expressivity as a language can be a wonderful thing, but it comes as a dangerous double edged sword. What is and is not appropriate to write depends on your target audience. Reckless and excessive use of some of Perl's more arcane functionality is what often gets Perl branded as a write only language amongst the unenlightened, and also causes Perl to lean toward unmanageability when code bases grow large.