Bashing Perl is a meme precisely because of the mentality of the creators of Perl (who set the culture). This "Forward to Learning Perl" epitomizes the mentality: Imagery of wizards, alchemy, breaking all the stuffy rules that quashed creative thought, etc. He even says "bowing down at the Temple of Orthogonality" like orthogonality a bad thing!
It hearkens back to the days when motor cars were curiosities that required frequent tinkering and had no safety requirements. The sky was the limit, but your car could blow up.
Perl was rightly bashed because it was the poster child of cowboy coding, which flies in the face of good engineering practices: Understandability, predictability, reproducibility, measurability, safety. This allows you to use a product with confidence. I had the misfortune of inheriting some cowboy code, and to this day I call a pox upon the writer. His lack of discipline caused YEARS of misery and maintenance costs; far outweighing any temporary benefit he provided.
Newer programmers might not have lived during the bad old days of cowboy coding, but I did. Nothing was documented. Nothing really worked because there was no edge case support. The mentality was "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand" and "If you're not happy with it, feel free to modify the code" (their impenetrable code). Basically, pass-the-buck for your own lack of discipline, and then blame the user.
Personally, I'm glad we've moved on towards becoming a serious engineering discipline, complete with UX being a thing.
It hearkens back to the days when motor cars were curiosities that required frequent tinkering and had no safety requirements. The sky was the limit, but your car could blow up.
Perl was rightly bashed because it was the poster child of cowboy coding, which flies in the face of good engineering practices: Understandability, predictability, reproducibility, measurability, safety. This allows you to use a product with confidence. I had the misfortune of inheriting some cowboy code, and to this day I call a pox upon the writer. His lack of discipline caused YEARS of misery and maintenance costs; far outweighing any temporary benefit he provided.
Newer programmers might not have lived during the bad old days of cowboy coding, but I did. Nothing was documented. Nothing really worked because there was no edge case support. The mentality was "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand" and "If you're not happy with it, feel free to modify the code" (their impenetrable code). Basically, pass-the-buck for your own lack of discipline, and then blame the user.
Personally, I'm glad we've moved on towards becoming a serious engineering discipline, complete with UX being a thing.