This is a great point that often get's ignored or glossed over. Perl code is information dense which makes it look messy to someone who doesn't know what each o

This is a great point that often get's ignored or glossed over. Perl code is information dense which makes it look messy to someone who doesn't know what each of the sigils and syntax elements mean. What this means is that perl has a longer learning curve but once you get over the hump you know a lot more about what the code is doing in a glance than you do for other languages. So it's not more readable to the new guy but it can be more readably to the ones who put in the effort to get up to speed.