Maybe the hacker who can produce error free code in Perl does not exist? If even hackers sometimes make programming errors, perhaps most of them were smart enough to eventually figure out they could minimize that problem by moving away from Perl.
Most companies I know actually asked their developers which language they should choose. Typically there is a decision eventually to concentrate on a limited set of languages, but choosing that or those languages is not usually being done without consulting the developers.
"... perhaps most of them were smart enough to eventually figure out they could minimize that problem by moving away from Perl. ..."
It does require dev's have to be better programmers. There are plenty of ways to make Perl code safe. Maybe you have to work harder at it?
"... Typically there is a decision eventually to concentrate on a limited set of languages, but choosing that or those languages is not usually being done without consulting the developers ..."
I agree with the limiting of languages. But I've yet to see languages chosen purely for good technical reasons. [0] And this is one reason I think Lisp gets pushed out.
Most companies I know actually asked their developers which language they should choose. Typically there is a decision eventually to concentrate on a limited set of languages, but choosing that or those languages is not usually being done without consulting the developers.