Perl has been my go-to scripting language for a long, long time -- since the '80s. And knowing it means I don't have to use Python. :-)
It's good tool for a lot of things, but just one of many. On the last large cross-platform (Windows, Solaris, Linux) project, I used many different languages: Assembly (x86), Bash, C, Cmd, Java, Ksh, Perl, Postscript, PowerShell, Python, SQL, Tcl/Tk, VBScript -- whatever was best for the particular task on the particular platform. That said, using Perl often allowed the same script to be used across all platforms instead of similar scripts in different languages.
And... Emacs. (yes, I'm old) :-)