Without reading the paragraph in context it's hard to say, but does it seem like the author condemns golfing entirely? It seems like the danger the author points to is that the language would be designed to invite those kinds of practices, i.e. as opposed to writing code that's readable. Perl's TMTOWTDI gives room for golfing, but it also allows for readable and easily maintainable code as well. It's important though, that people know the difference.

I think the danger w/ golfing is when one takes it more seriously than just a game--if someone applied golfing practices to production code, or felt in any way that it was the "right" way to do something. Frankly, I'm impressed by a lot of the solutions people on PM come up with, but if I ever saw someone do that in a professional context, I would not be pleased at all.