Even if being fluent in Perl becomes as lucrative as being able to maintain rotting COBOL code bases at some point, it doesn't make Perl a better language or so

Even if being fluent in Perl becomes as lucrative as being able to maintain rotting COBOL code bases at some point, it doesn't make Perl a better language or something one should decide to learn when facing career choices for the next 40 years or so. It is dated and should not be used for new projects. The IT community as a whole will thank you if you learn to code in a more maintainable language, too. (Disclaimer: I built my startup on Perl and sold it recently after 15 years. Would use something else today, learnt my lession.)