"After initially having similar thoughts about it being "obsolete" and a "dinosaur", I quickly realized how resilient and flexible the language is (I know the flexibility can come with some criticism)."

Not obsolete - can affirm. All of the Oh By[1] back end is written in perl, circa 2016. We use apache + mod_perl and are very happy with this environment ... just like we were in 1998.

[1] https://0x.co