[throwaway2016a]

I don't think that is why with Perl. Granted it's been over a decade so opinion might have changed but when I was in college Perl had a reputation as being a "write only" language. Where unless you had comments / documentation to explain it to you, if you encounter code you didn't write (or you wrote 6 months ago) good luck figuring out what it does.

All languages are like that to a certain extent but Perl more than others.

Edit: fixed "read only" to "write only"

[tooltalk]

You mean "write-only" language?

I had a lot of junior folks complaining about "un"readability of my Perl codes back when I used to work in finance. There were a lot of seasoned Java and C++ programmer on the business side who didn't have much problem hacking their way around Perl, but most folks on the operational side had less than a few year of shell, Python, PHP. I ended up rewriting their codes for speed, brevity and correctness -- and it drove them crazy.

But I've also seen a fair share of properly functioning, yet incomprehensible Perl codes so I could see why so many are turned off.

[sumeno]

Perl definitely can be "write only", but it doesn't have to be as long as you don't try to be too clever, but I could say the same about most languages. I wouldn't want to work on a stack that was centered around Perl, but it is fantastic for quick one off scripts or relatively simple file processing tasks

[laylomo2]

Wouldn't that make perl a "write-only" language?

[throwaway2016a]

Yes. Thank you. I didn't proof read my post and made a mistake. I meant to say "write only"... the original has been edited. Thanks again!