The designers of the Perl language, now a group, but still under Larry's guidance, took a look around at the other languages that people were using. The outcome of this self-inspection was Perl, version 5. The first release of version 5 came in late 1994. Gone were the impediments and much of the confusion that were prevalent in version 4. With version 5, Perl was truly a viable, general purpose programming language and no longer just a convenient tool for system administrators.
Most natural languages allow the speaker to express themselves succinctly and clearly.
However, most natural languages are also full of arcane constructs that carry over from the language's past. In addition, for a given natural language, it is impossible to fully master the vocabulary and grammar because they are very large, extremely complex, and always changing. You may wonder what these facts about natural languages have to do with a programming language like Perl. Surprising to most newcomers to Perl, the parallels between Perl and a natural language like English are striking. Larry Wall, the father of Perl, has extensive scholastic training as a linguist.