Well, the foundations of my fears come from intuition and from personal
market research/observations. I have no way to argue on
intuition.....but...market research is a "little" less qualitative.
### EXCUSE FOLLOWING RANT IN MY HUMBLE OPINION ######
In terms of market penetration, Perl was fortunately bouyed momentartily in
the histor of IT by the CGI revolution, but PHP, ASP, and Servlets/JSP are
eroding that position quickly. A whole bunch of Perl commuinity members
spamming the Sun Survey does not give me all that much confidence in the
future of Perl on the web.
In terms of technology advancement, in the amount of time Java has been
around, it has been far, far, far more exciting of a community to be in.
The same goes for COM and .NET. Revolutions and evolutions are MUCH bigger
and often in these competing technologies than they are in Perl.
So what is left for Perl...a language of SAs? Okay fine...but what an
uninspiring community to be involved in.
Is it going to be a glue language? Not likely. Can you say SOAP or .NET?
Can you say SunOne? XML?
The strength of Perl as a glue language has not gone unoticed by its
linguistic competitors. They are doing a fantastic job developing
infrastructures to pull the rug out from under Perl.
I don't think that Perl has to give up its soul, culture or personality to
enter new niches where it can thrive. But it will change. But isn't that
natural? Isn't that good?
-----Original Message-----
From: Abigail [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 3:31 PM
To: Selena Sol
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Let perl be Perl (was... perl vs php)
On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 02:32:23PM +0800, Selena Sol wrote:
>
> > Abigail wrote:
> > Now, I do *not* think Perl should go the Java way. I don't really care
> > Java is "big" and Perl is "small". I don't think Perl has anything to
> > gain by battling Java for the same market.
> >
> > Perl has its own role to play, and it plays it damned well. It isn't
> > as big as Java, but it shines real well in its own theater.
> >
> > Let Perl be Perl.
>
> This is a really, really important point to make. I have a seemingly
slight,
> but significantly different, view on this. I want Perl to be Perl too.
But
> I want Perl to grow, expand and evolve....in its own way.
>
> I agree with you that it is not approporiuate for Perl to follow Java for
> the sake of following Java. But I do think that it is good for Perl to
> learn from and enhance what Java has done so far. I also want perl to
> expand and embrace new markets because I believe that this is crucial to
the
> long term sustainability of the Perl organism. I fear that if Perl does
not
> push itself into new forms it may stagnate and that would be a real shame.
It didn't stagnate the past 12 years, and it's still growing.
Do you have any foundation for your fears? Because it would be a real
shame to turn Perl into something it isn't just because someone is
afraid for no reason at all.
Abigail
