I'd never used Datatables before, the first page you linked to highlights what can be used as a data source, it's not a perl specific thing. Expecting programmers to write code isn't unreasonable. Adding needless dependencies is a dangerous thing, as NodeJS developers found out to their peril.

Update: "...but this means I need to do all my heavy-lifting myself, whereas I want be standing on shoulders of giants. " that's why JSON::PP is core, you just return the data (from database query or other munging) in JSON format. A more polished end to end process is why this is also part of modern web frameworks like Mojolicious, and why they're such fun to work with, e.g. $c->render( json => { data => $griddata, cols => \@cols } );