12.5. Tips for the C++ or Java Programmer
The object-oriented features of Perl may appear frighteningly sparse; in fact, they are the consequence of a careful design to avoid unnecessarily bloating the language. For instance, there is no this keyword for referring to the current object in a method; instead, it's passed as the first parameter, and you can pick your own name. Most people pick $self because the declaration my $self … has a nice ring to it (or because they are former Smalltalk programmers).
Run-time semantics alone determine whether a routine is an object method or a class method, so you can easily write one that swings both ways. (A common idiom makes an object method out of a constructor.)
There is nothing special about a constructor ...
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