I disagree. JavaScript is one of those languages who's default failure mode seems to be to pretend everything worked and just produce nonsensical results.

As opposed to perl? :D

You're thinking of PHP. Modern Javascript has good error handling and is a pretty nice language to use.

I know that PHP gets a lot of flak but come on. Compared to javascript PHP is a marvel. I recommend you to try it.

Modern PHP has good error handling, too.

There are differences in style and views on things from the way they were long ago that float around. These impact a lot of opinions.

Modern Perl is fine too

I haven't used Perl in about 12 years, has it changed much since then?

Do you have any links to good examples/comparisons?

chromatic's book, Modern Perl, has my highest recommendation:

http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl_2016/index.html

I've mentioned it before, but reading this book and applying its concepts (along with judicial use Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices) changed my view of Perl from "well, I guess I'll use it since it's here," to "I really enjoy using Perl".

Mark Jason Dominus's Higher-Order Perl was another enjoyable read, for its advice on using Perl as a more functional programming language.

To some, Raku is what Perl should have been by now: https://raku.org

unless you want any sort of 'system' interfacing like process execution control, etc.