Perl was my first real language, too, but I haven't used it in years. Others complain about the sigils and referencing rules but I learned them early, when I was young, so I guess I didn't know any better.

I even had a job where we created a featureful website with just perl, DBI, and no framework except a simple module written by a programmer who left the company before I was hired. I look back to that job fondly, because everything seemed much simpler. Only bad thing about it was the paycheck. :)