It isn't weak, it's flexible. It's that simple. You can encapsulate as strongly as you wish. It isn't even all that costly. Bottom line, the language scales, from oneliners to 2,500,000 projects. You pick from the possibilities whatever your current task necessitates. Most people, most of the time, write stuff somewhere close to the oneliner end of the range. Perl's default behaviour is therefor only sensible.