You hadn't learned about strict back then and did not know why symbolic references are evil. Or even that they are called symbolic references.

It is using lots of globals, maybe even shared throughout multiple modules. Because you didn't realise the importance of style, not everything is indented correctly and the style is inconsistent at best. No external database is used, everything is serialized and stored as strings. If there was a database at all, then it used a table per record because you didn't bother to learn about databases.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I never did program that way. Not in Perl, nor in any other language. When I was taught programming, more than 10 years before I learned Perl, the importance of lexical variables, style, indentation, etc, was stressed from day 1. I had programmed in Perl for quite a while before I even considered using symbolic references. Or local for that matter. That's why I'm always baffled if newbies happily use, or want to use, symbolic references. Most mainstream languages don't use them, so where do they get it from? It's buried deep enough in the documentation. Are there beginners courses that promote their use? I certainly never discussed symbolic references or 'local' in beginners courses that I taught.

Abigail