Perl looks ugly to novices?

I thought the whole point of Perl was that there were so many ways to code something, there's always a way to make the code look elegant.
From Larry Wall:
Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.
This contrasts languages like Ruby which basically encourage/force you  to do things a specific way.

Just read this quote
I have a pretty major problem with a language where one of the most common variables has the name $_
Except you never have to use $_ in the first place. It's always a choice

In conclusion, people who don't like Perl don't know how to use it.

>>12
``He or she''
That fails to account for people outside the gender binary.  Just use singular ,,they'', and kick in the genitalia anyone who uses faggot shit like ,,ey'' or ,,zie''.  Also, please murder brutally anyone who spells ,,woman'' as ,,womyn''.

>>17
Singular ``they", like singular ``you", is PIG DISGUSTING.
Such abominations should be dealt with swiftly and permanently.

>>18
And replace them with what?  Alternating masculine and feminine pronouns is incredibly annoying, and ey/zie gets my prescriptivist senses tingling.

>>19
We got by just fine for centuries without a masculine singular third person pronoun, we don't need one now. As for singular ``you", what's wrong with ``thee"?

>>20
What we need is a gender-neutral third person pronoun; we do need one now because not everyone who can read is male.