I loved Perl when I first learned it. I loved it for the same reason I love Python now. It's very easy to express ideas I have in mind without worrying about the details. It's a great prototyping (as in prototyping ideas, not as in the type system) language. It was my introduction to "higher level" languages. That said, Perl suffers from having too many magical operators that makes it hard to reason about a snippet of code. I feel Python strikes the right balance.
Your comparison to Javascript is apt but I think a lot of us also find Javascript to be a bit of a horror. Recently I learned that Javascript doesn't handle modulus on a negative number correctly among other things.
Your comparison to Javascript is apt but I think a lot of us also find Javascript to be a bit of a horror. Recently I learned that Javascript doesn't handle modulus on a negative number correctly among other things.