On Perl, CPAN was and it's still amazing, and lots of stuff came from that. For example, Mojolicious for the web, BioPerl for bioinformatics and Rivescript to write silly chatbots, among others. Oh, and pkg_* under OpenBSD.
INB4 gen-z's rant on "PeRl It'S UnRead@ble", check the intro from "perldoc perlintro".
EDIT: Unless I'm sure the deleted link it's right, I'd avoid posting it.
The badly written stuff needs more "maintenance", and the people who need to work on it are more likely to complain (and I think you're stuck on confirmation bias).
In the late-90s, the early web gold rush was on, and a lot of amateurs started writing perl in a hurry as their first language. The fact that they could do anything at all is actually pretty amazing, and I'd say that's a point in perl's favor.
So my aversion to Perl could be considered a pragmatic solution to that problem. :-)
Can’t really be a comment without a aside-from-the-point slurring
I tought that because most of the books are outdated (15 years on IT it's an epoch), albeit the sed/awk/perl/*sh and Sendmail books are still godly useful.
If you want these books very cheaply, the Perl CD Bookshelf usually sells for about $5 used. You get Perl in a Nutshell in print and a bunch of the other books on CD.
A better introduction to Perl these days is Modern Perl, which is available to read online for free or you can pay for a print book. http://modernperlbooks.com/
Also, there are legal issues over promotion of pirated content.
Also, there are ethical concerns over pirating content that is easily and cheaply available legally.
Also, I said "Please" and didn't force anything on anyone.
Also, under a strict interpretation posting directly to pirated material is likely a violation of the Terms of Use for HN. https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou
Postmodern in this instance means rejecting modernism by remixing eclectic elements from various periods.