I think I disagree. You seem to be saying that the template (the View) is basically unnecessary if the Perl (the Controler) does all the lifting for it. It's true you can do it that way but as you can see, you are left with a MC instead of an MVC. Anything that manipulates (without changing) data purely for display should be in the View (unless it's complex to a degree as to make the template/View version toxic for readability/debugging compared to a more direct Perl/Controller version).