>>without even understanding why Perl is hard to read in the first place. You are talking about Bunce there.. he is smart (and pedagogically talented) enough t

>>without even understanding why Perl is hard to read in the first place. You are talking about Bunce there.. he is smart (and pedagogically talented) enough to know what he is talking about, more than amateurs like us. :-) >> Which is what life is like when you are surrounded by perl code and are not a perl expert. Hmmm... you wrote "using perl longer than any other major language except C"? At the end, you wrote that you mostly read code... you're not really a full time programmer, but browse code for different languages? Again -- you're out of luck with most "real" environments, since you need the libraries. TCL is really optimized to be trivially easy... >> You can't use parameter lists in perl. You can't use variables without context. There are misfeatures in all languages. Without checking, you can find solutions for most every Perl problem on CPAN. If you go there, check Moose. Also check Enlightened Perl/Modern Perl on the web. If you are only going to read without writing, then you will probably not start enjoying Perl. If you use it for real, it is fun and has a really good community. Most of '::', '->' etc exist in other languages. I already discussed that. For another example, Python's ability to keep {} for one thing really kneecaps the possibility to do one-liners with the same syntax... :-)