In spite of what you see over cappucino in a bookstore, all programming languages are difficult to understand, especially at first. They are “human languages,” after all, and so they carry a lot of idiomatic meaning.

As “native speakers,” we need to try to remember the “Perl As a Second Language” folks. (After all, plenty of times, they are us!) That's why comments are so important. And also, test plans. It does not hurt the Perl compiler in the slightest to pass-over any number of comments and PODs.