For the former, I think Larry does not imply a post-modernist “death of the author” position: there is still an objectively correct interpretation of the code as the author intended, but it may be understood differently by people of different experience levels. For example, a map with reference to a sub can be though of as a loop that calls the sub.
With perl, the objective truth is opcodes, which are well-understood by a small group. Everyone else bases their understanding on heuristics and analogies, and the goal is to write your code to trigger the same heuristics/etc. in the reader.
For the latter, you are declaring your opinion as fact. Every language allows redundancy and variation of expression; if it truly provided no benefit, why have we not seen a popular language that only allowed a single expressive style?
With perl, the objective truth is opcodes, which are well-understood by a small group. Everyone else bases their understanding on heuristics and analogies, and the goal is to write your code to trigger the same heuristics/etc. in the reader.
For the latter, you are declaring your opinion as fact. Every language allows redundancy and variation of expression; if it truly provided no benefit, why have we not seen a popular language that only allowed a single expressive style?