> No. As Gnat was fond of saying at last year's YAPC,
> "Perl is the last programming language you ever need". :-)
Well, it has been a while since I have been to a conference. These days, I
can only afford to send my R&D and/or projects team. I will be sending Stas
Bekman and Gunther Birznieks to O'Reilly (they will both be speaking so you
can say hello for me if you are there)....but....<sniff>...there is no
budget for managers <sniff>.
However, if I had been at YAPC, I would have told Gnat that this argument is
a bit silly. I know it was said partially in jest, but I mean....hey....one
should use the programming language appropriate to the task at hand and I
bet that even Larry would NEVER say that Perl is the right choice for every
task :)
Don't get me wrong. I think Perl is a wonderful programing language. That
is why our company is so involved.
But Perl is not the end-all-be-all language.
I think that as we learn to better advocate Perl, it is important that we
maintain a healthy bit of humility. Even in jest, blatantly wrong arguments
can subtly turn away potential converts.
But I do realize you were joking :)
> When cross-platform deployment isn't an overriding issue, there
> are other aspects of Perl that compare well to other technologies;
> developer productivity and CPAN come to mind.
I think that developer productivity is definitely true. In our projects for
example, we have a 30% cost increase for any Java project even if it is the
exact same application.
As for CPAN....I am not convinced.
I find the Java libraries built in to Java to be FAR more abundant,
integrated, and easy to use. Further, the free and relatively cheap
additions are equally as convenient. CPAN, though better and better ever
year, is still klutzy (in my humble opinion) to use. Also, too many people
duplicate work with modules that are essentially identical.
One of the things I would like to do as part of my 'Perl advocacy time
alotment', is to maybe think of beter ways to help CPAN improve. I think
that CPAN could be a big plus for sales calls....but somehow, it needs to be
packaged right. It certainly is not now.
By the way, does anyone know how many people are on this lost and how many
managers, sales perople, developers, etc are on the rollcall?
