I think your first paragraph contains a non sequitur. The existence of the strict and warnings pragmas, Perl::Critic, Perl::Tidy, Test::More, the size of the b

I think your first paragraph contains a non sequitur. The existence of the strict and warnings pragmas, Perl::Critic, Perl::Tidy, Test::More, the size of the bundled perldoc, CPAN testers, CPANTS, et al all contribute to the maintainability of Perl 5 applications. If you choose not to take advantage of those tools when writing a Perl 5 application, you bear the risk yourself. How does that reflect on the language or the ecosystem?