Tobias Kremer wrote:
Today I was in a meeting with one of Germany's top twenty
internet agencies to speak about the future of our (home-brewed Perl-based)
community app. I spoke to the person in charge of technology who
of course tried to persuade me that Java and .Net/C# is the
way to go. Even worse, he was convinced that Perl has no object-
orientation features at all! He was surprised when I told him
about the CPAN and Perl's flexible object capabilities.
Unfortunately this is not an isolated case.
Yes, thats quite common sadly and caused only by lack of marketing.
One of Germany's most successful web portals serving several
hundred million page impressions per month with Perl recently
started hiring Java developers.
It's so absurd when you think about it, from script language back to
compiled mess?
The opposite should be the case!
We really have to start learning from the Ruby folks,
take a look at these two books, it's pure marketing genius.
From Java To Ruby: Things Every Manager Should Know
(http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_j2r/index.html)
Rails For Java Developers
(http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_r4j/index.html)
I hate to say this, but Perl is really lacking some sort of marketing.
To my mind Catalyst could be the new killer-app that has the potential to
resurrect our favorite language. But not if we can't get the word out.
This is really frustrating. Catalyst's website is one big mess. Go to
the wiki section and you get gazillions of links on one page. Click on
documentation and you receive ugly POD pages. This is just not up to
standards set by other frameworks. Don't get me wrong: The content and
documentation is better than most other frameworks but the presentation
just sucks. I recently met another fellow perl dude and we're currently
brainstorming what has to change to make Perl and the Catalyst project
more appealing to the average CTO, technical lead, dude-who-is-in-charge-
but-thinks-perl-is-dead :)
I completely agree, but you don't get (good) marketing for free,
a company or The Perl Foundation would have to invest money in it.
Take a look at Java, PHP and Ruby, all the marketing initiatives can be
traced back to a few smart companies.
(Please take a few minutes and think about it before flaming me, thanks)
P.S. I read that the upcoming issue of the iX magazine will feature an
article about web development with Catalyst ...
Just seen that too, will be fun to read.
(http://www.heise.de/ix/vorschau.shtml) :)
--
sebastian
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