perl's rules are very very consistent and logical. (especially compared to PHP, and much more logical than e.g. javascript) They don't always look nice when app

perl's rules are very very consistent and logical. (especially compared to PHP, and much more logical than e.g. javascript) They don't always look nice when applied to contemporary problems, but for me it grew in the language feeling, when I could understand what perl does in particular case without looking into it's documentation. But ruby was a quite a happy move for me back then in 2006, language was underperforming, features were lacking, nowhere anything like CPAN, but I could express logic much closer to how I think about problems, without additional layer of "thought translation".