On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 22:37:29 -0500, William Goedicke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear Tom - > > I've thought a lot about why perl hasn't gained respect in the > deployment/hiring marketplace. > > >>>>> "Tom" == Tom Metro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Tom> This reminded me of something I've wondered about for a long > Tom> time. Why did PHP become as successful and popular as it is, > Tom> even though it mostly offers a subset of what Perl can > Tom> do. > > I think that PHP gained popularity for two reasons. It initially met > a need, that is, to embed logic within html. Second, it was simple.
And a third. It is so limited that hosting companies have no problem enabling PHP. Therefore if you want to use a $20 host you get the choice: use PHP and be fast or use Perl CGIs and be slow. But you can't use mod_perl unless you run your own server. > Tom> Similarly, Java, seemingly through the addition of servlets, > Tom> succeeded at enterprise web development, despite Perl having > Tom> been there first. > > It was more than that. There was a successful marketing campaign > which portrayed security, deployability and state-of-the-artness. And don't forget that Java had the aura of corporate support before "open source" had any mindshare. (Sun began marketing Java before "open source" was even a phrase!) > Tom> Today mod_perl is only rarely recognized as being an > Tom> application server. > > But, among productivity focused programmers mod_perl is recognized as > one of the best frameworks to deliver web applications. I'm not sure whether, at this point, there is much in practice to distinguish mod_perl from competitors like mod_python. I'm also not sure how many people have the mindset that mod_* is really an application server that just happens to work over the web really well. I'm also dubious of how well disseminated basic mod_perl best practices are. For instance how many know to use reverse proxies for performance? See http://perl.apache.org/docs/1.0/guide/strategy.html#Adding_a_Proxy_Server_in_http_Accelerator_Mode for details. > Tom> More recently, there's Python [...] great success with its > Tom> own application server, Zope. > > As a perdominately perl programmer I must say I love zope and bemoan > the lack of comparable CMS in perl. Well you can use Zope from within Perl: http://www.zope.org/Wikis/zope-perl/FrontPage Personally I don't like Zope. It made the mistake of pushing you to have code in an opaque repository that cannot be trivially integrated (or at least could not when I last checked, which was a long time ago) with standard revision control systems. They may have fixed this since I looked - they certainly have fixed a lot of potential problems, but from my point of view this is a deal breaker. For the same reason, no matter how tempting it is to have code in a database, don't. Ditto for your basic configuration information. See http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=394251 for a slightly longer rant about this. > Tom> And lastly, C#, which has borrowed ideas from Perl, Java, and > Tom> C++. > > Competing with the commercial software world is a whole different animal. We were already discussing Java which is part of the commercial software world. > Tom> All of these are aspects of the same theme - Perl loosing > Tom> mindshare to other technologies. It started out as a quiet, > Tom> underground language (telling someone you programmed in Perl > Tom> back in the late 80's, early 90's just got a blank stare) and > Tom> is perhaps heading back there (I've noticed it getting > Tom> dropped off the list of programming languages listed on trade > Tom> magazine qualification forms). > > Siiggghhhh...... You're right, of course, but, isn't that issue all > about the battle with the commercial world. My impression is that the Perl job scene has been improving in the last couple of years. My other impression is that Perl has an unfortunately high proportion of "programmers" who have messed with basic CGI but do not understand programming very well. > Having said that, I'm a leader in a consulting firm and I'm struggling > to convince my firm that we should develop a "LAMP Enabling" practice. > I see tons of organic LAMP deployment occuring. The idea of my > consulting product is that LAMP deployments are immature and that > there's value-adding consulting in making LAMP deployments "enterprise > quality" and by aligning them with strategic goals. I love using the phrase "enterprise quality" and I hate hearing it. Both for the same reason. You can mean anything you want by it, but the listener is likely to give it a very generous interpretation. :-/ > Perl's strength, in my mind, is that it has enormous breadth. As an > example; I write some app and after the fact realize I need to process > barcodes. No problem. This is an important strength, but it becomes less important as projects become more significant. What I mean by that is this: for small projects you can often get them mostly done by just picking up some pre-built chunks from CPAN. But once you've actually developed a significant amount of custom code, the effort of developing, say, your own code to handle barcodes is a fairly minor increment. The closer to your core development the project is, the less relatively important CPAN becomes. As an example take a look at Paul Graham's viaweb. This is touted as an example where Lisp was a big competitive advantage. And it was - for the core editor (custom, nothing like that really existed yet because it was written so early). However they went with Perl for a lot of their system administration. The difference is that the editor was a big piece of custom software so existing libraries mattered less, while in system administration you wind up with a lot of "shallow problems" where finding the right library is a huge timesaver. Ovid makes a very similar point at http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=408483. Cheers, Ben PS I'm not sure how much access I'll have to the net in the next couple of weeks in particular. So it may be good to plan to continue this discussion at the Wed social meeting... _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
