Short answer: python is perl for bureaucrats and computer scientists. Ruby is perl for people who realised php is awful.

Perl fits the same niche as English does for natural language - used everywhere, easy to learn for simple cases,very tough to master. The way I like to say it is that while most programming languages help you think more like the computer, perl helps the computer think more like you do.

In order to convinced about anything, you need to read documentation. And you need to learn how to read it well.

I've read the awk and sed man pages so many times, yet everytime I have to type a command I have to read it again.