On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 03:57:49PM +0800, Selena Sol wrote:
> 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.
Far more inspiring than the community of the web weasels.
> Is it going to be a glue language? Not likely. Can you say SOAP or .NET?
> Can you say SunOne? XML?
Sure I can.
But you know what the strength of Perl as a glue language is? It doesn't
require the parties speak SOAP. Or XML. Or something else. Perl is a
superglue. It glues anything. It doesn't say "you can talk to me,
but only in XML".
Perl talks XML if you want it to. Perl talks SOAP if you want it to.
Perl talks to any database you want it to. Perl talks all network
protocols.
> 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.
Yeah, but Perl *is* an infrastructure. One that can fit anywhere, and
that can be tailor made without too much of a problem. That's the power
of Perl.
Just because there's the network of interstates doesn't mean 4x4s are
no longer needed.
> 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?
Not when it's change for the sake of change.
Abigail
