[siamore]

The article says that having the syntax is not a bad thing but doesn't really say what it has over LISP's simple syntax, expressiveness? easy to read for people unfamiliar with the language? AFAIK the one thing it definitely allows is to be able to write a program and common tasks in just a few characters, which is great and all but not the strength of perl and definitely not needed in all situations.

LISP syntax OTOH is as he said easy to pick up and parse while still allowing all the expressiveness any other language can have (even without more syntax like the lambda character).

But there is a similarity between the two, the outstanding syntax. I don't know about others but I'd attribute it to C's popularity more than anything else and with most other languages following it (JS, C++...) it seems like it should be standard or something, I've seen far too many people avoid learning languages due to syntax without realizing something much more important: They might be turning down a language that can save them tons of trouble later if they just get past the one time step of learning the syntax, so listen to the author, perl is a great CGI language, and if that's what you need just learn it. other languages may be easier to learn, may be what's hip now but I'd bet perl is still better.