Federico, we're talking about
Wikimetrics, which is a very different project intended to run stats on groups of users (cohorts) for a specific set of standard metrics. This tool was mostly developed for and used by grantmaking and program teams at WMF and affiliates around the world, but its use is too low to justify the effort it would take to maintain it. Better tools are taking its place, and we're working on some of the infrastructure will support those better tools.
I think you may have been talking about Wikistats, which I agree would've been very nice to keep maintaining. I think ultimately we don't have too many of the skills that made Erik successful at what he did. Perl was just one of them, and not a major part in my opinion.
If I'm wrong and you're indeed talking about Wikimetrics, do please elaborate as we're just starting to make this decision.