A string of length N is vastly more likely to be a valid Perl program than a valid Python program. Ultimately this meant that Perl programs, while easier to type, were much harder to read, and extremely easy to misinterpret.
Perl is not only hard to read because there are many shortcuts that might look like line noise for the inexperienced (hell, Rust have a bunch of those too), it's because there is a bunch of the ways to do anything.
Like take humble array
Perl> @a
$VAR1 = 1;
$VAR2 = 2;
$VAR3 = 3;
$VAR4 = 4;
$VAR5 = 5;
Perl> @a + 2
$VAR1 = 7;
if (@a > 3) {print "big array"}
Will that also work for arrays ? Nope, if you want to force scalar context you're supposed to do scalar(@array). So how to add 2 arrays ?
@c = (@a, @b) #
irb(main):001:0> a = [1,2]
=> [1, 2]
irb(main):002:0> b=[2,3]
=> [2, 3]
irb(main):003:0> c = [a,b]
=> [[1, 2], [2, 3]]
>>> a = [1,2]
>>> b = [2,3]
>>> c = [a,b]
>>> c
[[1, 2], [2, 3]]