References do suck. All languages have ugly misfeatures, by nature. (Some language groupie collectives are in denial...) But you get named parameters (and type

References do suck. All languages have ugly misfeatures, by nature. (Some language groupie collectives are in denial...) But you get named parameters (and type checking of them!) for functions/methods through CPAN. And lots of other language extensions. High flexibility in programming languages -- Perl isn't close to e.g. Lisp macros -- do have costs, of course. You need to use automatic tools, code reviews and coding standards. But you should do that anyway. I really doubt the extra time/cognitive costs make for a noticeable extra burden, considering that you'll have to learn lots and lots of other stuff anyway.