Not trying to disparage Perl, which has some utility, like most languages, notably fast regex engine and presence on many systems. BUT: I've been writing Perl

Not trying to disparage Perl, which has some utility, like most languages, notably fast regex engine and presence on many systems. BUT: I've been writing Perl for much longer than Python, but despite wanting to write readable/maintainable code, Perl has a tendency to get you to a stage where your code looks cryptic (part of it is by design - Larry Wall, a linguist, values implicitness as "context" - I think explicitness, by contrast, should be aspired to, in order to avoid confusion). I've never written cryptic Python code (and I am not a particular Python fan, as I prefer statically typed compiled languages), but it should be said that clarity is one of Python's advantages. I agree with you that it is easier to write readable Perl than readable FORTH, which could be due to the similarity of Perl with other non-stack imperative languages.