<cite>With great power comes great responsibility</cite>

IMHO perl programmers are divided into two categories. Those who are lazy in the short term, for various reasons (true bad laziness, incompetence, short sightedness or inexperience), and those who are lazy in the long term.

Perl's power is a beast when misused, and though it helps you get the job done, usually rather easiliy, although often not clearly, when you need to. Those who misuse this this power tend to produce horrible code, and this is the code which tarnished perl's reputation..

This goes all the way back to the fact that strictness is optional...

Compare this with python or java, where you can't be as lax or forgiving to bad practices... There the newbie is much less likely to produce attrocities (although it can happen).

At the bottom line perl looks much scarier to those who cannot fathom it's powers, and handle it's weaknesses.

I believe that's all there is to say.