I've seen just the opposite: we used to host a rather well visited web-site for an airport with close to real-time flight information (1 minute delay). This ran on a Solair box with Slowaris 5.6 (if I remember correctly). The machine had a whole 32M of RAM (yes, Megs, not Gigs). And this was co-hosted with other sites on the same machine. It ran Apache with PHP generated from Perl scripts initially. Later it became mod_perl with a templating system I had developed.

Then a corporate decision was made by the client that this should be converted by a "real" IT company to Java. When they said their solution was ready, they switched over. Only to switch back to the old situation within 4 hours because the new system collapsed under load. Six months later, they finally had their act together and the final switch was made. With a lot more hardware!

To this day, I find that site less reponsive than our version of the site had been. I guess you could call that progress.

Morale: not sure. Anyway, I know why I want to work with Perl. That's important enough for me. And for my clients who believe in me.

Liz