That recent?!? Most criticism of Perl comes from people listening to second-hand rants of someone who hasn't looked at Perl since 2001.

Yes, the article could be improved by the Make magazine advice on submissions that you should write a 3 paragraph summary of your article and then submit that instead. This could have been shaved down to the 4 paras at the end (Prologue) to make the author's point more succinctly.

I think the whole thing is written tongue in cheek, and is trying to be funny.