I'm not sure I understand why people want to compare Perl to Java and C++ in this thread. The OP was talking about web applications. The languages of interactive web applications are Perl, PHP, ASP and to a limited but growing extent Flash.

When I first got into the computer biz in 1995 (Later in the dot.com boom I limited myself to websites), perl was the only choice for interactive web pages. Shortly after that, there was a lot of hype about Java solving all of our cross platform issues. Well Java fizzled. The virtual machine was slow and clunky and it was faster to download a new webpage with a 28k modem than use Java. There's still a lot of hype, but only a select few use it. Java is better suited at building desktop applications like OpenOffice not web applications.

At the end of the first round of Java hype is when I first heard about PHP and ASP.

PHP was very Perlish and ASP was the evil Microsoft's alternative. Of course you can guess which one I learned. I don't think anyone thinks Perl is the language for web applications any more. PHP and ASP are the de facto standards now.

Why did this happen? For the same reason that Java didn't become a web application language. These are niche languages. PHP and ASP ae both designed for web applications and database integration. Perl is a much more generalized language better for handling all sorts of weird backend things. That said, with Apache if you add mod_perl and ePerl, you've got something is almost as good as PHP. It's not that Perl has any serious problems, it's that PHP and ASP are niche languages are are designed to do one thing extremely well.

Somewhere at the beginning of the dot.com boom, I heard of flash. Like Java there was a lot of hype. However unlike Java once you got past the hype there was nothing there. Oddly enough Flash is exactly what corporate execs like. Lots of pretty stuff with no information. It stayed. It is evolving too. Taking a look at it years later, I can say it is now a serious contender at replacing PHP, ASP.NET, and Perl as the lingua franca of web applications. Flash will corner the market on webgames. It seems very well suited to that. However there is a growing trend of doing website entirely in Flash. If this trend continues, Flash will supplant both PHP and ASP. Again this isn't a case of Flash being better than Perl or Perl having any inherent weaknesses. It is that Flash is designed to do one thing extremely well.

Am I happy about this? No I can't stand Flash. I like the fact that Perl can handle any number of tasks. However specialization is the name of the game. You have to find your niche. If anything that is Perl's problem, it is too general and can do too much (sorta like when you go for a job interview and are told you are overqualified).

Should perl change? That's really not up to me. ;-) I hope not. Any movement to make it into a niche language I think is doomed to failure. You have to go with your strengths. In Perl's case it is being able to do most anything - maybe not the fastest, bestest, or most logical, but that is what Perl is. Perl is not a niche language and should not become one.