Lessee ... the earliest “production Perl” that I have seen in the field is 5.4.   (Similar experiences with other languages, which have changed far more from point-release to point-release, so with Perl we’re lucky, I guess.)   Nevertheless, any large difference of language environments (or library versions, etc.) between Dev and Prod is a big issue that needs to be resolved at its source ... lest you “break production.”

As to the second ¶, there are two kinds of “shops”:   professionals, and (by the seat of our ...) “pantsers.”   Hopefully, you work for the former.   In which case, “prod doesn’t change much,” and “you can’t change it at all.”   It is often better to change the development environment to exactly match production, even though the developers will glare at you.