On Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 03:14:05PM -0400, Scott R. Godin wrote:
> I'm in a situation where there are a small number of people looking to
> migrate a large well-traveled website from their current host (which is
> on NT and makes extensive use of .asp, and ms-sql), to a red-hat linux
> box of their own making, running apache, php, and mysql. I'd already
> coded up a number of enhancements to the original site within the past
> year, only to hit the stumbling block of having the current host
> unwilling to make the *slightest* effort at upgrading the perl
> installation or modules on their sole unix box (they have 30 or so NT
> boxes).
>
> I'm very eager to leverage my perl expertise and effort, particularly as
> I really need to be able to show some of the work I've done running in a
> high-profile, oft-traveled website, in order to gain more clients, and
> improve on their confidence in my ability.
>
> The problem is, that with the exception of one of the admins, who IS a
> perl fanatic like myself, everyone else seems to be of the mind that
> there's nothing that Perl can do that php cannot, and that php will be
> near-infinitely faster than perl (they won't be installing mod_perl as
> they seem to feel that it's a VERY intensive processor hog). Another of
> the admins is a very serious php programmer, and damned good at what he
> does, AND he has the ear of the box's owner, and downplays Perl every
> chance he gets.
>
> I DON'T have the unix experience I need nor the background to refute any
> of these claims, being primarily a Mac user and programmer (using
> MacPerl currently for prototyping and debugging my perl), athough I AM
> trying to get as much as I can, and indeed have some small experience
> already... just not from an admin perspective. (but I have a friend who
> is building me a box, with redhat or some other distro, so I'll have
> something to play with eventually).
>
> I need some ammunition. what have you got that I can really *use* here?
Nothing really. There isn't any magic bullet that Perl can do and PHP
cannot. In fact, there's a large set of languages that can all do the
same; they might do it differently, but that's the only difference.
But why fight the fight? Why would you even contemplate moving a large,
well-travelled site to a low budget machine of which you don't have
much control? If it's really large and well travelled, doesn't it need
something better?
Or you and I have totally different ideas about "large and well-travelled"?
Abigail
