My company is a Perl shop. That is not to say that every once and a while someone may quip "When I did this is XXX, it went like this". Good programming concepts will help you anywhere, no matter the syntax chosen.

I have learned many languages including VB, C#, Java, PHP, and Perl. In the end, I make more money programming Perl than I did any of the others. In fact C# and PHP have become my hobby languages, and yet I still find myself missing how I do it in Perl whenever I use those languages.

I also maintain that while many of these languages appear to me able to do the same thing eventually, they all do it differently and as such have different strengths.

My final answer: Any language can be a hobby language, find a job you like that is challenging, don't limit yourself at the onset to what language you will write. Keep your skills up on all the language you know. Being a programmer, from my point of view, is finding the best way to solve a problem and knowing several languages allows you to state with authority, "I choose Perl because ...".