Javascript is fairly new, Perl hass been around for ages. So there is a lot of old code knocking about that was written quickly and by people who quite frankly did not know what they were doing. Perl5 is actually extremely readable and if you are any where near a decent developer you will understand it. I have worked in loads of companies and bad code is bad code no matter the language. I have have seen some Java code that made me want to give up development for good, and don't get me started on legacy browser javascript code.
Per wikipedia, Javascript was appeared in 1994 versus Perl in 1987 - not that big of a difference.
Now, both Perl and Javascript today - are totally different beasts they been back then. They both evolved a lot, but due no real competition in browsers Javascript have monopoly. Perl on the other hand, even having all this awesome stuff in it today, have to compete with many other platforms.
Absolutely, it is when following readability guidelines and write documentation. Using obfuscation style is a mess and will never help anybody but the developer ego who believes he is smarter than everybody. But that's a pitty to act like that cause it create pain for maintainers and even for yourself.
