I do not see problem in mod_perl, but in a lack of any perl standard or convention for web applications.

Look at it as a perl developer that is charged with development of web applications. You could use CGI, but you will find very soon that this is to no use in real world. What else should you use? If you are apache user, mod_perl comes to mind as a natural solution.

That worked for me. But I was still looking for some portale, standard-based environment to do full-featured web applications. Found several 'application frameworks' and was not satisfied with any of them. None of them (2 years ago) supported XML, none was component-based. So I began step by step development of my own just-another-perl-application-framework in mod_perl.

Java has JSP, EJB, JA*, etc. Perl has nothing that should work as a standard that a novice should look on, except for old-and-bad CGI.

So, do not be too surprised to find that people take server-dependent systems as a 'standard'.