There is a subset of Perl one can get a sense of by reading the Camel book in order which is sane, readable, and effective. If you read Wall's explanations and justifications you get a great mental model on top of which the "weird" stuff makes sense and feels even natural.
Most criticisms I read focus on how dealing with legacy Perl is typically bad because it was written poorly. The thing is, I've read legacy PHP, legacy Python, and other "legacy" code that was just as terrible.
The new Perl code I work with, though, written by my colleagues, is every bit as elegant and readable as code in any other language - provided thoughtful people are writing it.
Perl has a bad rep but I have yet to see a single legitimate argument thrown at it which doesn't boil down to "I read some bad legacy code." I've been in the same boat, and believe me, I sympathize :)
Most criticisms I read focus on how dealing with legacy Perl is typically bad because it was written poorly. The thing is, I've read legacy PHP, legacy Python, and other "legacy" code that was just as terrible.
The new Perl code I work with, though, written by my colleagues, is every bit as elegant and readable as code in any other language - provided thoughtful people are writing it.
Perl has a bad rep but I have yet to see a single legitimate argument thrown at it which doesn't boil down to "I read some bad legacy code." I've been in the same boat, and believe me, I sympathize :)