A couple of things do worry me though, and they are probably a result of my unfamilirity with Perl and the open-source community. I wonder whether the choice of Perl is now causing many of the 'resource hogging' problems that seem to be at the root of many of the complaints. As the size and complexity of the code has increased, is the overhead of an interpreted language just too much? The other thing that worries me is the structure and documentation of the code itself. I know (again from personal experience) that when the pressure's on, dotting 'i's and crossing 't's is the first thing to go, and (to me) Perl looks very terse and unstuctured anyway. That can't make it easy to develop and maintain.
Nah. Remember what incredible overkill today's system is, and remember that all three target OS's are pretty good at multi-tasking. The CPU/RAM overhead of interpreted language is absolutely nothing.
One thing to realize is that rewriting the source code, test suite, and build environment from the ground up in cross-platform code written in a low-level compiled language is a big project. Like, hire three engineers, buy a couple of servers and estimate 12-18 months from start to the present level of stability. You think switching meta-data storage backends destabilized the system? Ha. Then add in the joy of low-level memory management and security holes galore because the low-level compiled language expects the programmer to take care of all that.
Cross-platform interpreted languages are a Good Thing(TM). Perl is a good thing. More importantly, ditching everything and rebuilding from scratch is a Bad Thing(TM).
I've worked with and sold much buggier products than this one, lighten up folks. You're getting what you paid for and a lot more. Bugs are part of the territory.
-- Jack at Monkeynoodle dot Org: It's a Scientific Venture... Riding the Emergency Third Rail Power Trip since 1996! _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
