The hook (I think) with PHP is that you can just take an existing static page, whack a few <?php .. ?> commands into it and instantly have dynamic content. Quick gratification is a powerful inducement to continued usage ..

Also, even though code and content are mixed, in PHP it is relatively easy to see where one stops and the other starts.

For a long time with Perl we had to embed HTML into scripts sprinkled with CGI.pm calls to get dynamic output. Often it ended up as a mess of <<HERE documents, endless print statements, or all of the above.

Things are different now - there is EmbPerl, HTML::Mason and a multitude of other templating engines or frameworks.

Notwithstanding that I still wanted that "instant gratification" of just inserting some processing commands or <perl>..</perl> tags and getting instant feedback.

Plug on ..

When I looked around I never found anything that met that need - so I created my own. Yes, "Yet Another Perl Framework". Once WebDyne (http://webdyne.org/) is installed it allows Perl code to be either embedded directly into a page, or called from an associated package. The tide will never be turned back, but I hope tools like mine, and the others mentioned, may at least give people who are proficient in Perl a reason to stick with it when developing web apps.

Andrew