I only "understood" Perl when I read the book and realized how much Larry Wall is a Languages (as in English Language) kind of guy. He expects you to learn Perl

I only "understood" Perl when I read the book and realized how much Larry Wall is a Languages (as in English Language) kind of guy. He expects you to learn Perl just like you would learn an usual human language - through experience and looking at examples from other people. Thi skind of explains why there are so many abbreviations and idioms and the TIMTOWTDI maxim, while also kind o justifying the lack of a simple nuderlying mathematical explanation to the language. Sadly, that was also the day I gave up on learning Perl, since I am the maths kind of guy and I get hopelessly lost if my programming language isn't built on solid logical ground, with few "core" features that I can actually aim to master.