Large companies still seem to prefer Perl. I know both Perl and Python but for larger programs I tend to prefer Python. I had a tough time convincing the management that it we should use Python for a project (I expect it to be 20-30KLOC in Python). Perl is the default scripting language in my organization. Default not as in policy but its what programmers reach out for as thats what they know. I think this might be the case in most large companies. Most programmers just know that Python exists but not much more.

Even where Perl is concerned, I don't think most developers in my organization care about writing good code. I spent a lot of time dealing with a large code base last week that uses a hash with hundreds of keys as a means of passing data between functions. No one even bothers with cpan much.