>> Perl can also be hilariously unreadable: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0017.html

Most programming languages can be obfuscated. That does not mean people write code in those programming languages like that:

C: https://www.ioccc.org/

Javascript: view-source:https://www.google.com/

The truth is that insulting Perl is considered stylish by some, so many people do despite knowing little to nothing about Perl and having never used it.

However, if you want Perl to be hilariously unreadable, why not write it in Latin:

https://metacpan.org/dist/Lingua-Romana-Perligata/view/lib/L...

Or Klingon:

https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun

This. I'm tired of these Gen-Z ers babbling about Perl and having no idea of what a proper Perl based project would look. Hint: most Debian tools and OpenBSD's package manager are Perl based.

It's like when we, Gen-X ers, were repeating bad stuff about COBOL without having seen a single line of it.

Then I saw a real COBOL program and... well... it was even worse than what I had imagined :-)

Perl has both oneliners/spaggethi code and games like Pangzero.