By and large the legacy problem isn't because Perl is a bad language per se - but because it's and old language (in popular usage).

Old code in _any_ language tends to be bad. Popular languages especially since popular languages attract more bad developers (there is a reason there isn't a "Clojure for Dummies" book :-)

I've seen horrible Ruby & Python. I've seen horrible PHP. I've seen horrible Lisp and Smalltalk. I've seen horrible C and C++. Pretty much any language that's been around more than a couple of years and has become popular has really ghastly legacy code.

(And yes - lots of horrible Perl)

<p><em> There's just not a critical mass (left) in the Perl community who believe that the target audience of their code is the next programmer who works on it</em></p>

Ironically I think that's the exact opposite of the current problem. The vast majority of the Perl developers I encounter now care very deeply about exactly those topics.

That's because the people who don't care are off playing with the new and shiny toys :-) I absolutely guarantee that in five years we'll have folk complaining about this horrible legacy Rails code - and this is why everybody is now using Clojure (or whatever).

I can pick out problems in the Perl community - but lack of a focus on quality is not one of them.

People see horrible code and think that it's because of a horrible language.

Horrible code is because of horrible (or novice) developers. Or good developers working under horrible management.

Bad legacy code isn't primarily a problem of language. It's a problem of time.