> MUMPS version will almost certainly be more unmaintainable (except when you use Perl).
I hope you're joking with that Perl jibe. Just look at the example provided by 'dark' below. Even the worst Perl code I've even seen (with the exception of deliberately obfuscated code) does not compare to that.
The 'Modern Perl' movement is demonstrating that Perl can be written responsibly and libraries like Moose are providing the tools to do it well.