If you want to know about the state of perl this is really all you need to know.

Sorry, you are quite wrong. Note that I said:

"the coffin of what was once the showcase for how Perl and its developer community are different, less contentious, than most."

I was referring solely to the rubble of this monastery. I did not mention the coffin of or even any sickness in Perl.

At the large company I work at, in the last six months, on my small team we hired three Perl developers who are all making very nice salaries. Across the company, there are a dozen offices in several countries; all have teams that are always actively hiring Perl devs. In the Los Angeles-area and throughout Europe, HR and employment service companies compete with each other to fill Perl openings. Every research university in the world hires Perl programmers on a regular basis. Etc.

I've been programming Perl professionally since 1995. Perl may have "lost" a lot of "market share" to other languages, but I feel rather sure that overall there are more developers programming in Perl than at any time before.

Why? It's still the best option out there for rapidly bringing business initiatives to market, in many sectors, including any SaaS, REST API, HTTP-delivered services you can think of. As those sectors continue to experience enormous growth, the overall demand for programmers grows, a rising tide lifts all boats, and there are more Perl jobs. Meanwhile, the Perl toolsets keep getting better and more refined, building on 20+ years of development.

The rumors of Perl's demise are greatly exaggerated.