I'm a born LISP programmer who also happens to know too much about perl. Eric has some points, but not too many.

Javascript would fare much worse than perl with these arguments. It is far more dynamic, far more unregular and produces even worse code than perl5. See e.g. http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascr...

perl is kind of a lisp - much more than javascript - with some clojure like features, like shorter hash and array syntax.

He admits freely that he is ignorant about Perl, so i am unclear why you would bother to subject anyone else to such childish insults borne from nothing but fear and hate of the unknown.

I'm not sure what do you mean? I didn't write this rant. I find it amusing because it has some food for thought – for instance side note about rewarding idiotic behaviour.

AFAIK Erik Naggum used Perl for a fair amount of time so I wouldn't call it a "fear and hate of the unknown" and it is about Perl hence also on topic.

So your point is? Did you even bother reading it?

> I didn't write this rant.

You bothered to link to it.

> side note about rewarding idiotic behaviour

The raw and naked idea is not entirely incorrect. Literally everything else in the sentences making up that section is.

> Erik Naggum used Perl for a fair amount of time

> Did you even bother reading it?

Did you? I quote from the screed:

    I once studied perl enough to read perl code and spot bugs in other
    people's programs [...], but I don't write in it and I don't ever
    plan to use it for anything

I don't know about you, but i find that unambiguous.