Programmer Humor

I kind of started with Python, and I hate Perl. Relying so much on global variables like $_, @_, $1, $2 is just the worst idea ever. Oh you want to call a function? Better be safe and backup all global variables you’re using, because they will be overwritten! Want to use some regex in a function? Better ensure all callers have made backups of the $1, $2, $3 variables.

The end result is just large amounts of defensive boilerplate everywhere because things will break if you don’t.

There’s also no good way to tell which functions use $_ without looking up the docs or keeping everything in memory.

The only merit Perl got in my opinion is its regex support. Quite handy for bash one liners time from time.