> I can run basically any Perl code back to Perl 4 (March 1991) on Perl 5.40.2 which is current.
Yes, but can you _read_ it?
I'm only half joking. Perl has so many ways to do things, many of them obscure but preferable for specific cases. It's often a write-only language if you can't get ahold of the dev who wrote whatever script you're trying to debug.
I wonder if modern LLMs could actually help with that.
I can. Some of it by some developers I can read far more easily than others.
Can you read arbitrary code written by developers from around the world in PL/1, or Ada, Forth, APL, or even C++? Big languages have lots of syntax choices, yes. It doesn’t need to be abused.
Even C has an obfuscated code contest that’s been going on for decades.
I'm only half joking. Perl has so many ways to do things, many of them obscure but preferable for specific cases. It's often a write-only language if you can't get ahold of the dev who wrote whatever script you're trying to debug.
I wonder if modern LLMs could actually help with that.