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.

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