but i am not here to discuss that design. my main boss is a senior vp
and his boss is an executive vp who is asking "why perl?". this web
system has had some instabilities over the last year (one of my tasks is
to help fix that) and so the exec vp is getting leery of perl. and they
have the usual fud about perl such as write once, can't find perl
hackers, etc. i will be preparing a fud/myth busting writeup soon so any
ideas on that are welcome. in particular any references to studies or
other things that show how much more effective perl is than java would
be great. i already can tell them that perl runs faster, perl hackers
develop faster and you need fewer of them than java coders. but
supporting evidence would great.
My own work in the data aquisistion at one Chicago hedge
fund might be an example. The data sources range from
emailed spreadsheets through PDF's to soap and web- scraping.
Their main issues are reliability and flexabliity, in
particular being able to get at whatever data sources the
traders require.
Perl's OO model simplifies the code, and it maintinence;
The arugment passing model simplifies data handling,
as does the ability to easily generate flexable nested
structures; CPAN avoids significant amounts of re-inventing
the wheel; the shallow learning curve helps people get
involved quickly when they start out.
There is also the advantage of using a true high-level
language for coding. Unlike Java or Python, integer-size
and string-to-numeric issues are handled gracefully by
the language itself. This saves us from wasting time with
conversions and leaves module and tool code much more
reusable.
--
Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647
+1 888 359 3508
