I believe the writeup presents an interesting and unique viewpoint so it's a must-read for experienced Perlers.

Meh, I think not so much unique :) Maybe be because I've hung around places like this long enough, but seem straight forward common wisdom, though there are some funny commentary ( TheDailyWTF kind of funny )

Regarding the astonishment, I would think regular unversity english/maths/physics portion of the curriculum would have cured these students of the one true way notion :)

I've found "evolution and hysterical raisins" works as a panacea answer for astonishment :)

Also funny, mentions " omitting return calls " practice that should "never be used" but then praises perls positive side, map/grep/sort as incredibly powerful, but you can't use return with those :)

Andd the overall message good, know your audience, know where your students are coming from, know your enemy, and teach them the good idioms :)

These materials touch upon some of these things discussed, and I've been waiting for an opportunity to share :)

http://perl-tutorial.org/, http://learnpythonthehardway.org/, Learning Perl the Hard Way, Why I Am Not A Java Programmer, What Perl Programmers Should Know About Java, Are there any Java texts assuming the user has a perl BG?