[PaulHoule]

I remember writing a cross-platform library for web authentication that worked with signed cookies. You would log in through a PHP form and then I wrote modules to check the cookie and refresh it in just about every language used in web development in the early 2000s. That included PHP, Perl, Java, C#, Cold Fusion, and others.

Of all the authentication modules, the one in Perl was the shortest and sweetest.

[ReversedYodel]

I think of it a bit like some huge regexs, you only arrive at the final point by building up to it in small (succinct) steps, and if you need to revisit it later, the old grey decompiler has to work harder.

Perl coders I knew prided themselves on illegible but powerful one liners in a smug/elitist way ("Ha! You can't read that?? That'd be three lines in C. Ha idiot."). I prefer readable code.

[bdcravens]

I think if your cat runs across your keyboard it's valid Perl syntax.