Nah, it's a hack. Useful, but still a hack. Why?

• Before even using objects (in the bless sense), a Perl programmer already has to understand references, packages, and complex datastructures. Java programmers create their first object when they write a "Hello, World!"
• Lack of a good way of doing protected methods/attributes (many people think that doing private data can't be done, but it's do-able using lexicals declared at the top of the package)
• No subroutine prototypes (well, no useful subroutine prototypes, especially in terms of objects)
• No compile-time checking of method lookups, which consequently makes it:
• Slow
• Unable to inline constant methods
• Impossible for use strict 'subs'; to help you
• Generally makes it easy to do objects wrong

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