As a language to write large systems in, I agree, but I still haven't found a better shell-script-replacement language. Perl as a somewhat cleaned up superset of bash/sed/awk/grep still seems better to me than the alternatives--- when I try to write those kinds of scripts in, say, Python, it ends up feeling clunky and verbose.
I no longer recommend Perl as a first language to learn: I think Ruby and Python are better choices.
I no longer recommend Perl to experienced programmers: Clojure and Erlang have more to offer to the Java or C++ expert.
Perl was very important and useful for a while, but at it's root, it's a kludgy, annoying language, full of bad design choices.
I believe Perl has had it's day.