One day my boss asked me: "how do you get the length of an array in
Perl?" So I told him:

scalar @array;

But of course what irked me is how unintuitive and irregular Perl is
and how this forced my boss to ask me something like that.

LENGTH $string => length $string
LENGTH @array  => scalar @array

PORTION $string => substring $string, $offset, $length
PORTION @array  => @array[$offset..$offset+$length]

In other words, conceptually similar operations do not map to the same
name in Perl. Why does this make Perl a better and not worse language,
than the intended replacement to Perl, Ruby, which is in fact highly
regular in all places where Perl isn't, with the above being just a
few examples? 

-- 
Terrence Brannon