In fact, I once took a MUD written in perl and converted it to OO syntax in with a perl script. These interfaces can pull data out from a database, extending the usefulness of perl. It's true that many computations in perl are slower than other languages. Perl has a lot of good ones built-in. If your program is slow, try trading speed for disk space or memory.
Programmer time is more valuable than computer time.
Instead of writing everything in C, only write the slow parts in C, then shell out to the C program. If you are really into it, convert the C program to a perl extension. Of course, no buffer overflows stops a LOT of security problems. Easier to understand rules - most shells are based on multiple substitution passes. Qub Group Eric Raymond's thesis regarding two models of software development, the Cathedral and the Bazaar .