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>Seems like that argument has moved the goalposts from "most people" to "most people who use the language", and it's still not clear why that's an interesting barometer.

Obviously because one's code has to be maintained by other people.

Plus, if anything, going from "most people" to "most people who use the language" has moved the goalposts closer, not moved them apart (which is what people complain what one "moves the goalposts").

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Plus, if anything, going from "most people" to "most people who use the language" has moved the goalposts closer, not moved them apart (which is what people complain what one "moves the goalposts").

Certainly, but that makes the criteria in my post much more interesting. The people in the new set are more likely to understand the features of Perl and how to look them up in the documentation or use formatting/linting tools to de-obfuscate code.

Unless the argument is that Perl as a language has some features which make it impossible for anyone to decipher, the context around any piece of code seems important to understanding it.

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