- Bigger community, thus more resource documentation out there (Perl has Perl Monks going for it).
- More MVC frameworks (CakePHP, CI, Symfony, Lithium) vs. Catalyst.
- PHP has a cleaner syntax
I'm biased to PHP so of course I think it's better. For someone getting started with web development, I would recommend PHP over Perl. That is not to say that one should never "explore" Perl. Hell, Lawrence Livermore Labs uses a lot of it.
As Perl was developed originally as a scripting language for unix, it is fast, but I don't think it's well suited for the web (my opinion).
Plus, like the troll below me said (who apparently wrote a book on Catalyst, hence his bias), PHP was highly influenced from Perl, so if anything PHP is an alternative to Perl, not the other way around (like the OP mentioned).
I don't suggest Perl because I wrote a book on Catalyst. I wrote a book on Catalyst because I suggest Perl.
Anyway, here's what Perl has going for it:
* a larger group of core contributers
* an order of magnitude more modules (and module authors)
* Moose
* excellent Emacs support
* higher average level of proficiency among core team, and module authors
Ultimately, CPAN is the reason for using Perl. But after doing a lot of work in Python, I do really appreciate the things that Perl has built-in, too, like all-encompassing regexes.
