I was not one of the downvoters, but I was not surprised to see the downvotes. I can't figure out in what way that comment added to the discussion. "I am assuming he was Doing It Wrong" with no additional commentary on what this affects or the implications therein. Regardless of the truth of the comment, it just doesn't seem to be a very useful one.
No, not doing it wrong -- he was almost certainly doing it in the predominant style of the language in the 1990's, which was procedural / scripty, e.g., hashes of references to arrays of references etc. Pre-OO.
And his remarks are certainly fair for the time period, but isn't it also fair to note that this style of coding is not practiced anymore? I think so but I'm interested in any viewpoint.
Sure, it is fair to note, and I think it's actually a pretty good point now that you've clarified it a bit. (I speak as someone who's currently using Python at work but Perl for my own things.)
However, it's a manner of how you present the comment. As you originally stated it, it pretty much sounded like "He's Doing It Wrong", which didn't add very much to the discussion. In my opinion, a much better way to go about it would have been something closer to "I think it's worth contextualising his comments. It is likely that the style in which was coding was more in line with earlier styles that are not used as often in 2011. While Perl is obviously still Perl, more recent styles do help alleviate some of his concerns."
Now, this clearly still isn't a perfect comment, but it, or something more like it, would serve both to clarify your position and to allow for discussion based on it, if people were up for such discussions.
But, again, I feel the need to reiterate that I was not one of the people who downvoted you, so I'm only guessing as to the most likely reason for the downvotes.
