Something which is not appreciated enough IMHO is just how much of the interwebs runs on Perl: for example Frozen Bubble is written in Perl. Also, from some error messages I’ve got the impression Yahoo Pipes uses (is written in?) Perl.

And just before you accuse me of being a Perl fanboy (which I am BTW :-p), here is a fascinating document: Far More Than Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about.