Thanks for the comments Phil. I've definitely come full circle. Initially I was a big fan of PHP but the more I learn and the more experience I get the less I like PHP and the more I love Perl. It's such a great language and when you combine it with the power of CPAN, the efficiency of Perl DBI and the TTK you have a great platform. I look at PHP as being Perl-Lite.

But, like you said, for off-the-shelf stuff it's your own real option. The only down side is you spend far too much time patching and patching and patching. If it isn't PHP itself that's vulnerable then it's Wordpress or PHPBB or what ever.

As for your question on TTK, no I haven't found anything better but TBH I'm not looking because so far TTK has never let me down. I've never found myself in a position where it wouldn't work so I haven't really dedicated time to investigating alternatives.

At work I now exclusively program web stuff in Perl (usually OO Perl) + TTK. For my PhD work it's still Java + Apache Struts all the way and were I to have to build any large web app from scratch that would still be my first choice, but for anything smaller Perl + TTK would be my pick. PHP doesn't really figure anymore in my mind.