I think the old comment by Larry Wall about “manipulexity” vs “whipuptitude” still holds true. Perl occupies a powerful ecological niche in the space of programming languages. The space has become more crowded over the years, but it's still hard to beat Perl if you're experienced with it. CPAN is a big part of this.

As to the future... Perl 7 is coming (:

https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/