Perl is a great language to have in your toolbox! It lets you create functionality with surprising speed compared to Algol-style languages (C/C++, Fortran, etc.), and runs quickly enough to handle a wide variety of problems. You can learn enough Perl in a few days to write powerful tools; unlike, say, C++, the stuff you don't know won't hurt you. For manipulating text - something programmers do all the time - Perl is unsurpassed.

Perl supports reflection so well that the perl debugger is just another perl script; if you need to override core functions, you can. CPAN - the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (https://www.perl.org/cpan.html) has 25,000 modules for download.

Most importantly, given the question about whether it's a good idea to learn Perl for a young developer: Perl feels different from the other languages you'll encounter. It gets lots of power from a small set of core features, and these are generally designed to be orthogonal in the sense that you can combine them in obvious ways and get what you expect. I've heard many people say things like, "Perl put the fun back into programming."