Among all the thoughtful replies two seem to most directly refute the object of my meditation. Hopefully the mod_perl folks will reconsider their mythos in light of this discussion.

mod_perl docs: "Unlike Perl, with Java you can create advanced client side applications." "There are some client side Perl solutions like PerlScript in MSIE 5.0, but"

jdporter: "Java and PerlScript is apples and oranges. PerlScript is an alternative to Javascript/JScript/VBScript (etc.). An alternative to Java (on the client) would be something embedded, like Flash, and whatever Tk or Wx thingies people might have come up with."

Jouke: "If you can create advanced server-side applications with Perl, you can create advanced client-side applications too, just by adding a GUI to it, just like Java does." "Hasn't anyone heard that Perl has Tk, wxPerl, Win32::GUI or Gtk?" "And if the problem is the Perl installation that 'needs' to be on the client's machine...just use PAR"

Thanks++