Sounds like this is more of a technical management issue. I would try to impress upon those developers that the company cares more about meeting deadlines and writing bug-free code than how many blank lines a script has. Find opportunities (i.e. performance reviews) to reward those who show more maturity and don't contribute to these kinds of petty arguments. Finally, you might try reminding them that there are several factors, including the growth of the global economy, which are rapidly driving the cost of software development to zero, and if they want to continue to be perl developers they have to show that perl can be a cost effective means for developing software.