[mr_toad]

> In Perls case: list/scalar context is usually the culprit

That’s just the surface. Working with matrices means nested data structures, and Perls syntax for nested data structures makes the list/scalar context look like child’s play.

[zbentley]

I'm no Perl lover (spent many years programming on codebases far larger than they ever should have been allowed to grow before switching languages), but what's so hard about references? Definitely not one of the sharper edges in the language IMO.

[citrin_ru]

Python has just one way to use list and dict and they are always passed by reference, but in Perl it can be either array/hash or arrayref/hashref. More options requires more thinking. Also Perl recently (in 5.20) introduced postfix dereference syntax which means that enough people were unhappy with existing ways to dereference. But it adds one more straw on camel's back - makes syntax harder to learn which is already a frequent complain about Perl.

Having said all than I have no problems using references in Perl, but see why a Pythonista can find Perl code hard to read.