Just to throw it out there: I'm getting a lot of money thrown at me to write terrible, un-scalable, insecure, accidentally functional, untested and largely untestable code and though it's the most money, it's not the first time. (Dudes, don't start. I tried and tried and got blocked and blocked and the contract is almost up so...)

Businesses are only as "smart" as they need to be to bring in enough money to function and keep the honchos in villas. It's a C- world. Thank the Lords of Chaos -- or is it Law? -- for a few A+ niches like PM.

As to the OP: one of the reasons Perl is, so I say, the best general programming language out there is the frickin' ridiculous speed you can prototype almost anything and redo it just as fast if needed. It can be a waste of time and effort to try to plan for a big app before the app is big. Fortunately there are sweet spots now like Catalyst that make it a moot point. But the idea is, don't put more value into a thing than it's worth. You wouldn't fix up a used VW with a jet engine when all you need is to drive to work. I still write the odd standalone CGI for things that will never see more than a few hundred loads a day. And if they suddenly do, it's a 1-3 hour project to rip the guts out and put them into Catalyst or CGI::Application or FCGI or whatever. I'd rather use those 3 hours up front to read or hike or ...