Are these languages still used in some niches? Certainly, TCL is still big for scripting ASIC/FPGA design tools last I checked. Similarly Perl projects will still be used and maintained for a long time, it may well outlive us all.

But it's very hard to defend using Perl on a new project these days. I know I wouldn't. I have very little love for Python but I'd go with it instead of Perl almost every single time now. There was a time where CPAN was the killer feature of Perl. Now Python caught up while, as the parent points out, CPAN is slowly rotting due to unmaintained packages. NPM being a mountain of trash is entirely irrelevant frankly. And it's not like in its heydays every single CPAN package was a marvel of software engineering either.

>The care people put into packages like DBI was incredible, compared to anything I've seen on NPM.

See, even you use the past tense. There's no argument that DBI is great. That's not the point. Languages survive not because they're good or bad, but because they have community and corporate support. That's why PHP holds up pretty well while Perl slowly falls into irrelevance. We can lament it, we can try to fight it, but can't deny it.