So, what I ask of the monks is this, does anyone else think that there are times to use perl, and times to forgo its use?

There is always a set of circumstances where one language is a better choice than another.

If all the code currently written in your company is C++, everybody on the development team codes C++ and you need to create a real-time application to run on a device with limited RAM and CPU then Perl would be a foolish choice.

If everybody in the organisation knows Perl, your existing codebase is all Perl and you need to create an application that provides a SOAP API to a dozen different databases then C++ would be a foolish choice.

Without more detail about the applications being developed, your development environment, your development team's skills, your existing codebase, etc. it's hard to say whether Perl would be the right choice or not.

There is no reason (IMHO) that developing quality applications should be more difficult in Perl than another language. I do most of my development work in Perl not because I'm forced to, but because I think it is the best language for developing the applications I'm paid to develop (and I like to think that they are of a vaguely decent quality :-)

Can you give us more detail on where/why the lack of type checking and OO features are causing you problems? We may be able to offer some pointers.

The syntax, cryptic or otherwise, shouldn't really be an issue since that's a matter of learning the language. You can make the (possibly valid :-) argument that Perl is a harder language to learn than some others, but I think that's a separate issue from its suitability for building quality applications.