... an expert who wants to be able to comfortably use code written by others would prefer if the language in which this code was written left little room for screw-ups.

I'll be the first to admit that my experience with programming languages is limited in breadth (let's just say FORTRAN, C, Perl, with small amounts of emacs-lisp and java, and passing exposure to Python and C++). But I have never seen, and do not ever expect to see, a programming language that leaves "little room for screw-ups."

The ability to "comfortably use code written by others" depends much more on the clarity of docs and specs and the use of appropriate tests, than on the particular language being used. In these regards, I don't see how Perl is at any sort of intrinsic disadvantage.