Most of these design decisions are very useful and pragmatic, and not everyone regards them as "crappy".

Additionally, there are several misleading statements in your post. I expect you are aware of the following but just for the record:

> - pervasive global state (`$_` and friends);

Perl uses dynamic scoping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(computer_science)#Dynam...) when setting $_ and friends. For example:

    $ perl -E '$_ = "A"; say; say for ("B", "C"); say;'
    A
    B
    C
    A

For me, dynamic scoping (and, relatedly, RAII) is sorely missed in languages that don't have it. (Although I do agree about $a/$b in sort -- that's a language wart, but not too bad in practice)

> - autovivification: a single read by key from a hash is enough to actually create this key;

Not true:

    $ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'my $h = {}; $h->{a}; print Dumper($h)'
    $VAR1 = {};

You need to read it as a hash or array reference for it to autovivify:

    $ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'my $h = {}; $h->{a}->{b}; print Dumper($h)'
    $VAR1 = {
              'a' => {}
            };

Autovivification is another feature that I miss in languages that lack it.

Your points about the perl5 implementation are definitely accurate, although I suspect a lot of language implementations have their own dirty laundry as well. :)