But then, once you trip over yourself in such a situation, isn't it also the case that it's usually very easy to tweak said Perl scripts so that they play nice, do the right thing, make difficult things possible, etc etc?

I don't know what ClearCase VOBs are, or what they have to do with perl scripts or ease of programming, but if there's a script that's causing trouble for you, there's probably just a couple extra lines of code you could add so that it still does what you want it to do, without causing that trouble.

Of course it's possible that a given coding style would be, for some reason, an obstacle to that sort of easy repair, but that's more a matter of the programmer's chosen coding style -- okay, blame Perl for allowing that programmer to believe that the chosen style was "okay", in the sense that it "worked" (the first few times)...

But is that really Perl's fault? Many consider Perl's tolerant, forgiving nature a feature rather than a problem; on balance, the benefit tends to outweigh the risk, and when you end up on the wrong end of that balance, you just have to learn. And learning is good, right? Go on, admit it: your experience has made you a better programmer, hasn't it?