linuxpimp20

Hi. i don't know much about perl but i hear the syntax can make large programs hard to maintain and read. I've also heard a lot of administers started using it for scripting over bash scripting. I only use linux so bash scripting is fine for me but i was curious how well perl is for scripting on both linux and windows and if that is why admins have started using it cuz it works well in mixed environments? thanks for any comments in advance.