> Perl has always “flowed” for me and made mostly intuitive sense. Every other language I’ve had to hack on to get something done is a struggle for me to fit into some rigid-feeling mental box

That is just how I felt about Perl (4 years full time dev in the 2000s) and how I now feel about https://raku.org (aka Perl6). Anyway, I tried to gather some fellow feelings here about 18 months ago:

https://rakujourney.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/perl-love-notes...

It is sad that Perl became so despised after the error of preannouncing a non-compatible upgrade. I understand that people couldn't wait. But Raku is here now and it is worth a second look imo.