It’s actually pretty simple ultimately.

Perl is extremely expressive, meaning TIMTOWTDI but really beyond what most languages afford.

Perl, at its most basic usage, is extremely easy. I wrote my first production script at Amazon.com after two weeks head down in the Llama. Perl is, at its deepest, quite wide and a bit magical.

Perl’s system level facilities got it a place in all *nix systems quickly so it was de facto popular.

Most persons be they developers, politicians, teachers, drivers, doctors, or whatever are not very good at what they do. It’s a USA-ism but a C is a passing or average grade. A C equates to 70% correct or as the half-empty would say, 30% wrong.

So you get the intersection of a widely available language in bloom at the jump of the interwebs that is simple to wield but difficult to master catering to the most dissonant problem solving a less competent even than average user base can generate. On top of that: haters gonna hate. Having beams in your eyes makes you a mote-seeking cranky pants.

For my part, nothing but love for Perl. I think it’s a great language for a serious beginner; discipline is most of what makes Perl not PHP in a code base.

In reply to Re: Why so much hate? by Your Mother
in thread Why so much hate? by Carfax

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.