[bliss]

I love perl because it's fast, but it definitely follows the WORN pattern. Write Once Read Never. No matter how many commnets I leave for future me, it's always a voyage of discovery reading my own code, forget reading anyone else's :)

[mhd]

I wonder how you achieve this. The way I see it, Perl got that reputation mostly from a few sources: Heavy use of regexes when that still wasn't as common, the default variables like $_ and of course sigils (@list, $scalar, %hash). Sure, you can golf it to have some outrageous results in your Usenet signature while remaining McQ, but C has an obfuscation contest and never got as teased about that.

Sure, if you're coming from structured Pascal 101, that might be an issue, but in the day where deeply nested functional rat kings tend to replace the humble WHILE loop, is a Schwartzian transform that confusing?

[marcosdumay]

> Heavy use of regexes when that still wasn't as common, the default variables like $_ and of course sigils (@list, $scalar, %hash).

And implicit variables. Also, implicit variables. Composed types didn't make it any easier; and references, that broke all the logic implicit on the sigils.

Oh, and did I mention implicit variables?

[thaumaturgy]

One of the early foundational principles of Perl was "TMTOWTDI" (http://wiki.c2.com/?ThereIsMoreThanOneWayToDoIt for the unfamiliar). The intention behind this was cool: do "it" whichever way makes the most sense for your particular situation.

But the end result was horrible: everyone did "it" every possible way, and that, IMO, is the underlying reason for Perl's reputation for being unreadable.

I also think it had a great deal of impact on the development of later languages and principles, which tend to focus much more on removing freedom from the programmer and enforcing idiomatic ways of doing "it". Today, you're far more likely to encounter modern code written by different programmers which looks very similar -- at least on a line-by-line basis, anyway. At the architectural level, it's still a big game of Calvinball.

[etripe]

If that's really what you think and you think it's down to the language, look up Modern::Perl (0) and, if you're object inclinded, Moo (1), Mouse (2) or Moose (3). Then there's always perlcritic (4), too.

In my mind, it's down to it having been popular, attracting many amateurs. You'll find equally unmaintainable bash or PowerShell scripts and definitely as much garbage, WORN JavaScript code. Writing maintainable code requires both knowledge and effort.

[0]: https://metacpan.org/pod/Modern::Perl

[1]: https://metacpan.org/pod/Moo

[2]: https://metacpan.org/pod/Mouse

[3]: https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose

[4]: https://metacpan.org/pod/perlcritic

[mst]

Definitely.

Here's a small IO::Async + Moo app that I still consider to basically be how I'd write it today - I invite people to browse the source code and tell me what they do/don't find unreadable compared to more "raw" perl.

https://metacpan.org/release/App-Procapult

[arkadiytehgraet]

ALL of the listed above libraries are complete garbage, impossible to use productively among several developers.

I worked in a company that had huge Perl codebase, which made extensive use of the Moose library. After trying to make sense of it, I gave up and used plain Perl, writing it as unidiomatic and simple as possible, so that hundreds of other devs, also new to Perl, would be able to understand the code I wrote. This was the common sentiment - most of the people followed the same path.

The library is just a nightmare - Perl is dynamically typed, there is NO adequate IDE support (compared to the one statically typed languages have), so good luck with working out how the library works underneath. And if I cannot understand that, how on Earth will I understand what even my code is doing? (Never mind the others')

In my mind, the amateurs are those that created the libraries without any idea on how they are going to be abused, thinking everyone should use unreadable incomprehensible syntax coupled with unapproachable internals.

I apologize for the rant, I had no idea this topic moved me so much.

[tluyben2]

Hmmm. Not sure if that is on purpose, but I don't suffer from that; I can read code I wrote in Perl 20 years ago just fine. I'm not even sure how you would write Perl code like you suggest. It looks noisy sure, but once you know what it means, how is it hard to read?

I guess if you do deliberate golfing/obfuscation you can make anything unreadable.

[oftenwrong]

    #Before enlightenment,
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    
    #After enlightenment,
    use strict;
    use warnings;

[mst]

I'm more likely to have:

    use strictures 2;
    use Moo;

since strictures fatalizes most warnings as well as turning strict on for maximum "telling perl if I made a mistake to barf immediately rather than trying to be helpful and guess"

[kamaal]

Curious to know how much Perl code do you write on an every day basis?

[bliss]

10 years ago, my daily grind, nowadays rarely, but good to have in the back pocket