My boss came up with a good analogy to describe why some people like Perl and why some don't. There are some people who appreciate games that are very abstract and with simple rules from which complex behavior emerges, such as a game like Go. These people tend to be drawn towards programming languages that are built out of small pieces with a consistent philosophy from the ground up, such as lisp or Haskell. There are others who enjoy games with complex rulesets and lots of detail. These people probably like Perl with all its nooks and crannies.
Perl code has many things to discover, and the way you assemble larger things relies on unique features of these smaller things. While in the end both approaches have you building a larger thing out of smaller things, the former approach is more likely to be built out of all of the same small thing, while the latter is more likely to be built out of a bunch of different small things. I think that's why some people can find Perl code to be "dense" and others find it "expressive".
I think Perl 6 was built with a much more consistent philosophy behind it than Perl 5, so this analogy breaks down a bit. But the user experience, the "Perlishness" of it, still remains. To the extent that people pick sides in language wars, I hope this analogy can help people appreciate the other side.
Perl code has many things to discover, and the way you assemble larger things relies on unique features of these smaller things. While in the end both approaches have you building a larger thing out of smaller things, the former approach is more likely to be built out of all of the same small thing, while the latter is more likely to be built out of a bunch of different small things. I think that's why some people can find Perl code to be "dense" and others find it "expressive".
I think Perl 6 was built with a much more consistent philosophy behind it than Perl 5, so this analogy breaks down a bit. But the user experience, the "Perlishness" of it, still remains. To the extent that people pick sides in language wars, I hope this analogy can help people appreciate the other side.