I think that criticism that by learning perl one doesn't get any transferable concepts is bit unfair. Though I no longer program in perl, some of the things I learnt using perl has been useful later too. To list here are some of the "concepts" that I learnt using perl: regexes, some aspects of *nix system programming (fork, zombies, signal handling etc.), modular code organisation (writing/using perl modules), code documentation (aka PODs) imbibing importance of documenting the code. True learning some other language (say Java) would make familiar with other concepts (say OOP) but perl has its fair share of concepts that one can pick by programming using it.