Hi Andrey.
I'm a contract software engineer in Iowa [U.S.]. In my present contract 75%
of my development time is spent using Perl.
The reasons that this team chose Perl are (no significant ordering):
1. Speed of development.
2. Low cost
3. Performance
In the past 15 years I've developed in over 15 different languages on
several different platforms. To date, my largest accumulated development
time has been in C/C++, at over 5 years. I've been a Perl developer for
about a year now.
In this present contract we regularly process files that are several
gigabytes in size. Perl absolutely tears through these files! I have one
particular program that parses fixed length records in files that range from
1-15 gig. On average I can parse one of these files in under 90 seconds for
a 1.5 gig file on Windows NT. Perl is very strong with text and date
processing.
I've also done a bit of CGI programming using Perl. Perl is fantastic for
this as well. Especially if you are on a Unix platform.
Although I've not done TK development, the examples that I've seen would
lead me to believe that this is not one of Perl's strengths.
It's easy to find modules freely available that will allow you to adapt Perl
to your particular needs. For example, the Win32 module allows you to access
the OLE engine for Windows platforms. With this you can manipulate [and
create] any of the MS Office format documents.
Perl has tons of documentation available on the net. And many, many people
willingly available to assist through mail groups, web sites, etc.
In my opinion JAVA is a stronger language with a better OO foundation and
better GUI support. But for text, and date manipulation, I've not come
across a better language than Perl.
As far as a career choice, the employment opportunities for Perl vs. any
other language would depend on your location and specialty. For example, the
need for a Perl developer in my area is much smaller than a Java developer.
Since you're posting this to a Perl list, I suspect that you might get
slightly biased answers.
You didn't mention the platform and language or languages that you are
currently using. It might be helpful to know what you and your co-workers
are moving away from.
I hope this helps.
Ron
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrey Bronfin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 7:14 AM
To: Dbi-Users@Perl. Org (E-mail);
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: OffTopic : Perl & careers
Dear gurus !
i want to convince the managers & co-workers at my company to start using
perl as a standart scripting language here.
So I need your input on the following points , please :
1) success stories : which tasks can be most easily accomplished with perl ,
i.e. examples of what perl is best for (better than C ,Java , Pl/SQL etc ...
- unofficially , of course) ;
2) who uses perl most (sysadmins , DBAs , etc.. ) and how they benefit from
it .
3) advantages of knowing perl career-wise .
BTW , it would be interesting to know which postions do list-subscribers
hold : developers , administrators etc ...
Does anyone of U do perl development as their primary job , i.e. is there a
"Perl developer" position in your organization.
Many thanks in advance,
DBAndrey
* 03-9254520
* 053-464562
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
