It all depends what you're comparing it against, and how you're using it. Keep in mind that Perl was originally created to fit a text processing and shell scrip

It all depends what you're comparing it against, and how you're using it. Keep in mind that Perl was originally created to fit a text processing and shell scripting niche, in which it is tuned to perform quite nicely. I've heard it claimed that its regex engine is likely the fastest you'll find anywhere. These days its reputation is mainly in the above, and as a glue language. It's simply not used as much for large standalone applications where people would really notice the speed issue, in comparison to something like Java (which is what comes to mind for me as at least at one time having the "slow" reputation). And although it might not apply in the distant past, CPAN is large enough now that for any conceivable resource-intensive task, there will be a modules available to wrap an appropriate C library.