It's been many years since I coded Perl. Probably 20 years. The last project was a web framework for a big Intranet/Extranet project. The project was delayed by the client, and a new project inserted before it - we needed something running fast, and as it used a Macromedia Flex user interface, we needed something that could render out HTML and XML easily. We ended up discovering Ruby on Rails, becoming converts and never looking back.
The Perl I'm seeing looks different to what I remember - it's more structured, and seems to be employing newer ideologies I'm familiar-ish with. Will have to hit up O'Reilly and see if I can find a primer!
CPAN back in the day was amazing. The future of library management. Frankly, I don't know how it's progressed over the years, and I hope it has picked up features from the Ruby world, like Gem, Bundler etc. (I wouldn't mind an RVM like bundling for Perl itself too). Working more with Foswiki, I'm spending more time using CPAN (not that much time, but more than nothing), so I now need to understand it properly. Understand paths, how sudo/user level permissions affect modules etc. Also, would like to know if there's a bundler style syntax for installing modules required for a project.
The Perl world seems to move slowly. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing - if it ain't broke etc. Bit annoying then that I got rid of my Perl library of books a couple of years ago :D