Hey Jonathan --
> I certainly hope you tell your potential clients where the statistics
> come from. Hopefully the site hasn't been nandored ...
The source is key. The only thing better than Sun would be Microsoft. (I'd
love to read the internal memo which caused Microsoft to fund Active State!)
I would love to get some other quantitative indications of what I feel to be
true: That Perl is the predominant web-application development environment
in the USA and in the World today. Hard data would encourage more than my
clients. It would encourage Universities to teach advanced Perl programming
(not just sys-admin scripting) as a serious subject. That means more (and
better) programmers available to write more and better Perl code for serious
projects!
It also means I can say something definitive when a programmer tells me he
is jumping to Java, "...because Java is the future."
I'm a programmer. I've worked with dozens of different programmers over the
years. I know that programmers write the best code in the language they
like the most -- technical merits are virtually irrelevant. I know that
some programmers like "shiny new languages" because... well... they're shiny
and new! When the polish fades on Java, they'll be off to the next thing.
It's not a poor reflection on Perl (or Java) -- it's just a programmer's
emotional preference (for which they often create psudo-technical
rationalizations).
Things to think about:
* I have heard a rumor that at ORA, the Perl books outsell all other
programming books. Do we have any facts and numbers to which we can refer?
* What about jobs? How many Perl programming positions are out there
(filled and un-filled) compared to other languages?
* What about programmer preference? Among programmers who code in
multiple languages, how to they rate Perl?
* What about defects? What is the defect rate for Perl code as opposed to
other languages?
* What Fortune 1000 companies officially sanction Perl code? Which prefer
it? Why?
* What other sources/types of data would corroborate my assertion?
Thanks!
-Jesse-
--
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Jesse Erlbaum ....................... CTO
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ............. Vanguard Media
v: 212.242.5317 x115 ...... New York City
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