A compiled Java file (.class), is just the byte code to be executed by JVM. And Perl, with it's complex syntax, when is parsed, a bytecode is also created, optimized, and than executed. But we can't forget that Perl is 10 times more fast to run than Java, including or not the parsing time of a Perl source, including or not the compilation time of a Java file.

Soo, the approach of Java to has it's code compiled to execut it, let's say, that in theory is good to make things faster. But in the practice we see easy that the "fast" point was forgot in Java.

Java is much more about OO than any other thing, and Perl is much more about make things done.