"Its syntax is very forgiving, and there are lots of ways to do most things"
Am I the only person who sees this as one of the biggest problems with PERL? Don't get me wrong, I love choice and having options. But when you're learning a language you do not want 10 different styles of writing a function, statement, loop, whatever. Because when you are working with 10+ people you now have 1 language, 10 different ways to write in (and now 10 different ways you need to read).
When I first started learning PERL and reading books, websites and downloading examples all the different styles of writing in PERL was the biggest problem. You can't just simply learn how to do an IF statement, you have to learn the 20+ different ways you COULD write an IF statement, since every example you will find online will be totally different.