There's a lot to be said for standardising within an organisation. That said, realistically there's stuff that C++, Java, JavaScript, and C (to name some 'big' languages) do that Perl just can't do. Of course, if you can say your business will never need to write software that runs extremely fast, be bounded in memory use, link to a kernel, build UIs, run in a web browser, or do well, whatever Java does :-) then fair enough.
On a tangent, The old idea that a decent programmer can pick up a new language and be solidly productive in it in a number of weeks is a hoary old load of bollocks if you ask me. Sure they can produce _code_ but it won't be very good and it'll take them much longer than someone skilled in it, and no programmer I've ever met can start producing complex application-class code because it simply takes time to learn and become familiar with libraries (often the largest task), and the quirks of debugging, i.e. what errors look and feel like in different situations and how that maps to the actual problem. I'd consider myself a decent programmer, and python a reasonably learnable language - I've been coding in it on & off for two years and I'm still learning stuff, and I'm not talking about bizarre esoteric edge cases. I've been coding perl pretty much continuously since '94 and am still learning ideas & libraries that make me more useful, and that's true of pretty much everyone I've spoken to. You just can't get away from it taking gobs of time & effort to get good at this stuff. (This is all in support of your basic premise there's real value is specialising, btw.) Paul On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Lyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi All, > These days I hear a lot of:- > "You should use language X for this, language Y for that and language Z > for the other" > "Because language X was designed for this, Y is most commonly used for > that, and Z was made for that OS" > > Sounds perfectly fine in theory, but what is the reality? > > The way I see it this method has many problems for businesses, > particularly SME's but I see big businesses being effected as well. > > Here is a hypothetical Scenario. > > You hire 'Super Programmer' who can code X Y Z at a high level. He makes > you sysadmin scripts in X, web scripts in Y and gets other pieces of > software talking to each other with Z. These guys are rare, making them > difficult to replace by a single person when they leave. They are also > very expensive. > > He leaves the company and you cannot find a replacement who knows all of > the languages at a high level, you need someone fast and it'd take to > long to train someone up. > You end up employing 2 people instead one doing X and Y and another > doing Z. This means more managerial time is devoted to getting the two > programmers working together properly and more admin time processing > things like PAYE, etc. > > A month on and one of your programmers finds that some of the software > he needs to update and maintain is actually coded in rare language W. > The original 'super programmer' discovered this new language and used it > as it was designed specifically for the job in hand. Unfortunately there > is little documentation and the language has since died and is no longer > maintained. Much time is lost recoding everything to language Z. > > The companies business shifts a little and they want to target a new > platform. The best languages to use on this new platform are A, B and C. > The current programmers are not familiar with these languages. Training > them would be to slow and costly. It's feared that them having to use to > many different languages, will hinder their performance on the ones they > are currently using. > > So the decision is made to outsource this platform to another company. > Many issues arise getting the outsourced programmers to work well with > the in house programmers, and keeping both platform versions in sync > with each other. > > A lot of time. A lot of money. A lot of headache. > > > Here is another hypothetical Scenario. > > You hire a Perl programmer. He makes you sysadmin scripts in Perl, web > scripts in Perl and gets other pieces of software talking to each other > with Perl. > > When he leaves you replace him with another Perl programmer. > > When the work gets to much for him, you hire another Perl programmer to > work with him. > > When the company wants to target another platform, your Perl programmers > code the software in Perl. > > Of course coding in Perl all the programmers get to go home early :) > > Call me a Perl loving fool if you will. But I don't see any other > scripting language out there that comes close to handling a diverse > range of tasks, as well as Perl does. > > > I apologise that the scenario isn't presented better. My English was > never that good :p > > > > Lyle > > _______________________________________________ > BristolBathPM mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.bristolbath.org/mailman/listinfo/bristolbathpm _______________________________________________ BristolBathPM mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.bristolbath.org/mailman/listinfo/bristolbathpm
