When you know it & it's various implicit various implicit variables, you feel enormously powerful, are able to make really beautiful use of the bountiful context Perl leaves out for you. It's heady & compelling in a way almost nothing else ever has been for me.
Pass by sigil is weird but everything being named symbols is a powerfully simple concept, that opens interesting roads.
But gee it sure is nearly impossible to read after. Rebuilding the context of how everything fits together, remembering each little rule you've taken advantage of is a trying puzzle indeed.
Sidenote, it's a long far off hope (lots of the base deb tools are Perl), but I hope someday we can run a Debian system without Perl, that we end up with more mature replacements eventually. It being everywhere is the authors #1. In general they try to present practical sensible reasons. But so few are language specific concerns, are context but not really talking "Why Perl" itself, why Perl the language. The seductive heady weird ambiance of Perl is so unique, is a much less structured & clear "why".