That's a good point.

There's a reason there's a chapter in the Camel about being a good neighbor, and a chapter in Advanced Perl Programming about XS and hooking Perl up to other languages -- sometimes what you need is a thin layer of glue between old and crufty or even new and beautiful 'solutions'.

Sometimes the best program is one that does one job simply and easily. Sometimes the best use for Perl is letting something else do the heavy lifting. Play to its strengths and you'll do fine.