From my own view, it is a great language that overcomes problems in the C language, like variable types and prototypes, which slow down writing code.

Perl takes care of alot of computer details , behind the scene, so that you can write code the way you might "think it" in your head. Most notably for me, is that you can think of a variable as just that(in most cases), and not have to worry if it's text, float, or whatever.

It is sort of an evolution in the computer-man interface, making it easier for man to think like a computer, so he can write useful programs.....fast

Its free. It runs and compile well on a wide variety of computers, and is sort of the older sibling of newer languages like Python and Ruby, which also aspire to make programming easier than doing it in C or C++.

It was originally developed for assisting in text processing, but has just grown into a "can-do-anything" sort of glue and duct tape language, which is extremely useful.