I'd say if you want to do something do it in Java, not only can you run the derived works on almost every platform, but you can easily develop it from any platform as well. You could even run it on phones and such, plus there is a massive amount of resources in the Java community, or just google for that matter.

I never liked Perl, I found its syntax a bit too strange and annoying lol. Anyway, good thing about Java is you have so many packages you can re-use for many things you may need to accomplish. It's Object Oriented as well, people try to say 'Java is Slow' but that's just old school bullshit, nowadays we have faster computers as opposed to 4 years ago, and besides if Java is so slow, why would Microsoft have ripped off Java, their so-called .NET 'Framework' is literally their way of ripping off Java, even thought I can't deny .NET is sort of epic, but anyway, I don't really know what you're trying to make, but your best bet is Java, people are more likely to already have Java installed than Perl anyway.

Another thing I love about Java is that if you don't like how someone formats their source code you can easily reformat it to your own liking, and Eclipse is pretty sexy really.