On Sun, Aug 13, 2000 at 06:27:56AM -0700, Madeline Schnapp wrote:
> >An observation could be that organisations need to have a job done,
> >and choose whatever tool (modulo hype and other marketing factors)
> >that does the job best. When organisations needed CGI jobs, Perl did a
> >better job at CGI scripts than shell and C, and people massively
> >started to use Perl. Apparently, what the world wants now is XML and
> >Perl is not the best tool around for XML jobs. So it could be less
> >a Java versus Perl issue than a "what tool suits my current problem
> >best".
>
> So why can't Perl be a better tool for XML jobs? Is this something the
> Perl core developers should be looking into? We certainly see a huge
> demand for XML and it is continuing to build.
A showstopper is Perls incomplete and only recent Unicode support.
XML really started happening about 2 years ago. There was no XML support
then, and the Perl community largely ignored what was happening with
XML. Perl didn't jump on the bandwagon, and about all there's now
available is an XML parser. But that's not enough; you'd have to have
complete solutions if your goal is to conquer the market.
As for what Perl core developers should be looking at, that depends on
what you see what the task of Perl core developers is. If you think that
their task is to make Perl buzzword compliant, then sure, they should
focus on XML. But I don't think they look at themselves that way, and
I don't think they should do that either.
If ORA wants Perl to be big in the XML world, then perhaps ORA should
find out what the XML world needs, and hire programmers to develop Perl
applications that will be used. Because it doesn't look like there's
enough interest in the Perl community itself to do that kind of work
for free.
Abigail
