If you think or perl as a toolbox of many tools, then the 'tool which does the job well is not quite gone'. For example, if one wanted to match expressions contained within a string using perl, one would probably use the regex tool to do the job. Or, if one wanted to count distinct words in some file, one might use the hash tool to store those words with their counts, etc.

So, perl could be considered a toolbox of tools which each do specific things and do them well, joined with a synergy component which allows all the tools to play well together and do many things well that would not be as "well" ( small, efficient, etc ) using a group of stand alone tools.