I've been a Perl programmer once, and I assure you given a pile of legacy Perl code, written in a good old style with good old "everything accesses everything", no comments and clever use of tricky Perl constructs, most people would be inclined to yell for help. It's not specifically Perl's fault, but a constellation of Perl being at the top of its popularity when thinking about who will support it 20 years later didn't exactly enter the mindset of most programmers.