When perl is too fast

The idea for this post has been brewing for a few months, but I was inspired by this post from David MacIver to get on it.

I like Perl. From a trendiness standpoint this falls somewhere between admitting that I like peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches and admitting that I like clubbing baby seals. I understand and can appreciate the common complaints: the language is too big, its syntax is baroque, it is write-only, TMTOWTDI is a bug rather than a feature. But I want to talk about something else that has been irking me.