C *is* faster, of course, though for web-stuff Perl gets a big speed boost if you use 'mod_perl', an extension to the Apache webserver which makes Perl behave more like a traditionally compiled language.

Which is better depends what you're doing. You wouldn't (or, at least, *I* wouldn't) write heavy graphics stuff in Perl, or any other stuff where it's important that it goes as quickly as poss. For lots of other applications though, development time is more important than speed of execution, and a program is usually quicker to write in Perl than C. The programmers wages are often more expensive than the hardware.

andy.