I'd say there is and always will be more than one way to do it. Even if a language manages to constrict usage of the syntax to the guidelines, one layer of abst

I'd say there is and always will be more than one way to do it. Even if a language manages to constrict usage of the syntax to the guidelines, one layer of abstraction higher up it's all choices once again. There have always been good and bad practices in Perl. Without change and reevaluation, how should there be progress? I regard Modern Perl as the aggregation of the community's knowledge, experience and best practices with regard to designing software. I'd like to emphasize the last part of the former sentence, since I believe Perl's continuing influence and ability to find new talents is at least in part depending on the nature of the community. And especially the fact that it doesn't matter where a good idea come from. If the Python guys come up with something smart, more power to them, because we might be able to use their experience. And at the same time, I think Perl wouldn't have been such a success for a long time if it hadn't been as flexible as it is, catering to people coming from other styles and other environments. Yes, the Perl community might have a common way to do it, and in this day and age even a library that does it all for you, and stuff you wouldn't even have thought of yet, but that doesn't mean you can't come up with something better. With the ability to extend the grammar in Perl 6, I believe this will go full circle. Since then everybody in the Perl community will be able to experiment with language design, find bugs, write proof-of-concepts, and so on.