At 0:46 -0400 2000.08.11, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Perl is like a Arabian horse. The
>winner of the pack, but only in the hands of an excellent rider. But often,
>it's not about finishing the race. It's getting there, safely. And other
>horses might not be as fast, and they look ugly, but they won't bolt.
True enough, though I think you don't need to be an "excellent" rider to
win with Perl, just a competent, good one. The problem is that many
programmers aren't either.
>Furthermore, Perl lacks features. Tk/gtk isn't a substitute for the GUI
>that comes with Java
Well, while Tk/Gtk aren't great, and the Java GUI may be better, neither is
suited at all for end-user programs. If you want a good GUI, you gotta go
to C/C++ or some sort of native toolkit. Since the Java GUI stuff is so
bad and I wouldn't want to use it for end-user stuff anyway, I don't think
Java has a real win here. Others disagree, but as a longtime Mac user, I
am somewhat of a GUI bigot, and Java's is just Bad.
>threading is *still* experimental, Unicode support
>is only recent, but incomplete, and there is no usuable compiler.
perl IS the compiler ... ;-)
>If I were to pick a language for a large project (many coders, long
>period of evolvement), Java wouldn't be my first choice. But Java would
>be an option. Perl wouldn't be a contestent.
It depends on the project and the setting. If I were doing a hacker / open
source project, Perl would be my first choice. If I were doing a corporate
project, well, it would depend on the project.
The fact is that companies hire three types of programmers (in no
particular order): hackers, computer science majors, and morons. Hackers
can do Perl just fine, morons can't do anything without Visual Studio, and
computer science majors often follow the buzzwords and the money, which
means Java. So if I am setting up a project with a long lifetime, I have
to consider who will be following me and its impact on the company. And
that is the biggest reason to stay away from Perl. Not because of its
little niggly things here and there, but because, in many companies, I know
the persons following me what know what the hell to do with my code, even
if it is as perfect as I can make it.
This problem plagues all languages that aren't C, C++, Java, or anything
blessed by Microsoft. Python is even worse, because almost no one knows it.
I'm not saying there aren't things inherent in Perl to make it a poor
choice. I am saying that it is factors not inherent in the language which
are most important. Finding people who are both competent AND like to use
free software is just difficult.
--
Chris Nandor | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://pudge.net/
Andover.Net | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://slashcode.com/
