I’ve not used Perl anywhere near that ancient in a very long time and have never had significant problems in the last 20 years, despite having written at least 20k lines of Perl over that time. You got caught up in the Perl 4 / Perl 5 changeover, which was at least as big as the Python 2.x – 3.x transition. People, including myself, are still suffering from that one 18 months after 2.x EOL and several years after the writing appeared on the wall.
Although religious arguments are great fun I suggest that we should take this one elsewhere and return the thread to matters astronomical.