Boston.pm will have a tech meeting Tuesday, January 25... ...post to the discussion list if you'd like to suggest a topic.
I'd like to propose two possible meeting ideas, which I'll post separately so their merits can be hashed out in separate threads.
Back in December Dan Sugalski wrote:
Squirrelmail's a nice web-based mail access system. Yeah, it's PHP, but it works...
This reminded me of something I've wondered about for a long time. Why did PHP become as successful and popular as it is, even though it mostly offers a subset of what Perl can do. (I'm aware of some of the historical reasons for PHP being created. What's less clear is why a Perl equivalent didn't address the need.)
Similarly, Java, seemingly through the addition of servlets, succeeded at enterprise web development, despite Perl having been there first. Today mod_perl is only rarely recognized as being an application server. (Aside from the obvious explanation of Java getting all the IT industry PR, I've heard part of the problem was the lack of J2EE-style enterprise class libraries for Perl, which some people set out to correct, but I haven't heard anything about it in several years.)
More recently, there's Python. It appears to be going after much the same problem space as Perl, just doing it differently. And having great success with its own application server, Zope.
And lastly, C#, which has borrowed ideas from Perl, Java, and C++.
All of these are aspects of the same theme - Perl loosing mindshare to other technologies. It started out as a quiet, underground language (telling someone you programmed in Perl back in the late 80's, early 90's just got a blank stare) and is perhaps heading back there (I've noticed it getting dropped off the list of programming languages listed on trade magazine qualification forms).
The response to these questions are probably old news to people following the Usenet groups and other national Perl mailing lists, where these and other advocacy topics have undoubtedly been hashed out countless times, but many of us (including myself) don't or no longer follow those groups.
What I propose is that instead of someone giving a talk, having a panel discussion on issues related to this. Hopefully pulling in some people who do follow the national groups, and perhaps some people with expertise in PHP, Python, and Java. Discussion points could include:
-maybe these other tools provide a better solution. I'm a believer in using the right tool for the job, so lets hear about the advantages they offer, particularly from the perspective of someone who knows one of the other languages *and* Perl. What does PHP, Python, and Java do better? (In areas that overlap with areas that Perl supposedly excels at. Obviously no tool will be ideal for everything. For example, GUI applications for Windows PCs, while doable in Perl, are typically not considered an ideal fit for Perl.)
-what are the unmet needs that led to these other technologies being used for projects that were previously done with Perl?
-what is being done in Perl 6 to address these unmet needs? (For example, the efforts to interoperate with .NET.)
-what libraries or other things could be developed for Perl today to address these unmet needs?
-does it all just come down to personal preference? Liking one syntax over another. And have little to do with technical capability?
-why should we care? Maybe we shouldn't. Or maybe you're annoyed that all the latest cool web applications are written in PHP and a pain to customize. Or maybe your concerned that you won't have the choice to use Perl at your next job, because the boss is convinced one of these other tools can do a better job.
(I'd like to request that the above questions remain rhetorical for the moment, and that any feedback be limited to discussing the merits of this as a meeting topic and whether you'd want to attend/participate. If the idea doesn't fly as a meeting, I'll repost this for discussion later.)
So does anyone have expertise in one of these other languages and would be willing to say a bit about it? Anyone with strong feelings about how Perl is or isn't addressing the unmet needs and would like to discuss it?
-Tom
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