${nested}{arrayref}->push(4)

is certainly more readable and shorter than

push @{ ${nested}{arrayref} }, 4

or

push ${nested}{arrayref}->@*, 4

And ->@* should be aliased to ->list or ->arr

Perl 4 started as "bash on steroids", it immediately convinced Sysops to have a better designed language with sed and awk semantics included.

But today's ubiquitous language is JavaScript.

The strategy should be to aim at a "JS on steroids".

And JS has autoboxing.

See also autobox on CPAN.

Autoboxing could be a killer feature when marketing v7 or v8 as more readable advancements.

Update

And please don't tell me it's not possible to fix the speed penalty with special opcodes for a handful of built in methods.