My perl code probably reflects that fact. In my humble opinion, the programming language Perl has set back an important part of computer science many years. It should be every computer scientist's worst nightmare. Most of the definition of the language is exceptions to rules, exceptions to exceptions, etc. In cases where perl doesn't force one into bad programming practice, it encourages bad programming practice.
Expressions mean vastly different things in different contexts.
And so on. And so on. And so on. And he is not talking about placement of whitespace. He is talking about grammar.