CGI (regardless of the language) fires off a separate process for each hit. This can take some time.

ASP "scripts" the webserver, so the computations for the dynamically generated page are performed within the same process that is also handling the request. This method has plusses and minuses. The closest thing to a cross-platform "ASP" is Apache with mod_perl, and any one of the 20 or so templating packages, including the included Apache::Registry but also stuff like Mason or EmbPerl or the brand new AxKit if you're into XML.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker