The problem I have with your attitude ("Just because everyone and his dog is using it has no weight with me") is that this continues to push Perl into history. It shows the world that hard core Perlers care not for this new fangled technology, they'd rather not think about it or learn about it. And so people go elsewhere. I'm talking about marketing of course, and most hackers don't give a hoot about marketing, but it's an issue Perl faces (why do you think the Perl 6 project exists?).

The world changes, and we have to handle new data formats. You're lucky if you're in an all Perl shop and don't deal with outside customers or other people in your department handing you data, but most of us don't live in that world. We do live in a world of strange tabular data formats, and perl handles those just fine, but one day your customer will have to send thier data to an MS shop, and they'll ask for XML, and then they'll ask you if they can send you their XML, because that's easier for them. It's just how the world works - we can't stop it turning even if we want to.

I've never suggested that everyone should use XML for everything just because, it's a tool, and a damn useful one - being able to describe data structures in a language independant way is a powerful paradigm. But I'm not here to persuade you to use a technology. Simply to convince you that you can use it if you want to or need to, and that perl is damn good at the job.

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