Coming from other languages, perl is friggin weird. What gets me most is stuff like this:

%hash = ();
$hash{'key'} = 'val';

you initiate the hash with %, and add keys with $, which in my book is wickedly confusing.

I know you might not believe me now, but it lets you do stuff with simple memory lookups that take lines and lines of procedural code in other languages.

Is it ok to program exclusively like this?

As you said, one of perl's mantras is TIMTOWTDI, so my answer to your question is yes.