(This probably both offends both Perl people and C++ people. Here goes.) I think writing clean, readable, modern Perl is like writing clean, readable, modern C

(This probably both offends both Perl people and C++ people. Here goes.) I think writing clean, readable, modern Perl is like writing clean, readable, modern C++: it's _all_ about what language features you avoid using. Writing good code is totally possible in both languages, and people have done it successfully. It's unfortunate that both languages are filled with features better left unused, but they're both very useful tools. Perhaps Perl has a little more competition in its area of focus than C++ does. Many would argue that we should be using neither Perl nor C++, but I haven't seen any serious contenders to replace either. (For the record, I use both Perl and C++, but only infrequently.)