Actually I don't accept your premise that a wordy, English-like language is easier to read. Code must be both comfortable to read & write (i.e., elegant). If we assume our reader knows both language A & B, then 1 line in language A is definitely easier to read than the equivalent 10 lines in language B. Just because language B looks more familiar does not mean the precise semantics come across better. A small set of keywords is easier to fit in your head. Furthermore, in the more verbose language you are forced to spend energy that could also be spent in thinking about whether the code is correct.
Regular expressions can be properly documented in a multiline style with comments etc. For a non-trivial regular expression, the previous example holds: converting the regular expression to a sequence of if-else statements would easily take 10x the number of lines. On top of that, regular expressions are implemented efficiently. That said, I do believe comments are necessary and don't think Perl is a good language to use.
The argument about static typing and verbosity is moot, because static typing does not have to be manifest typing, since type inference can provide the advantages of static typing without the verbosity.
Comments
Actually I don't accept your premise that a wordy, English-like language is easier to read. Code must be both comfortable to read & write (i.e., elegant). If we assume our reader knows both language A & B, then 1 line in language A is definitely easier to read than the equivalent 10 lines in language B. Just because language B looks more familiar does not mean the precise semantics come across better. A small set of keywords is easier to fit in your head. Furthermore, in the more verbose language you are forced to spend energy that could also be spent in thinking about whether the code is correct.
Regular expressions can be properly documented in a multiline style with comments etc. For a non-trivial regular expression, the previous example holds: converting the regular expression to a sequence of if-else statements would easily take 10x the number of lines. On top of that, regular expressions are implemented efficiently. That said, I do believe comments are necessary and don't think Perl is a good language to use.
The argument about static typing and verbosity is moot, because static typing does not have to be manifest typing, since type inference can provide the advantages of static typing without the verbosity.
Regarding taking programming seriously, I don't believe that has very much to do with the language, but rather with the software engineering process, cf. http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff