Perl has always been the butt of write-only jokes within the PL community; just imagine Perl as Rodney Dangerfield complaining that it "gets no respect." APL is of course, the canonical write-only language, but it is completely honest and accepting about it.
I programmed in Perl for CGI in the mid 90s and didn't see anything wrong with it. It was weird, but I had programmed with much worse before then (Lotus Notes Script...whew), so I wasn't really bothered by it. That being said, I see no reason ever to write another line of Perl again.
Something like religion then, were people hearing voices long ago got followers -- but today generally are locked up? :-)