Neil Gunton wrote:
This may be a little off the usual topic (bug reports, howto etc) but
I am genuinely curious to know what other list members think about it.
Back in 2000 or so, when I started using apache, mod_perl and Embperl,
it was a really dynamic scene and quite exciting with all the
possibilities for cool app development. There were other languages
(Java, PHP) and other competitors within the perl universe (Mason,
Template::Toolkit, AxKit) but in general the mod_perl/Embperl world
seemed like a bright place to be. Now, a few years later, I am not
really seeing all that much in the way of people "out there" talking
about mod_perl, or even Perl. When they do, it's often in the context
of legacy applications, or "old fashioned CGI". Somehow, people have
forgotten about mod_perl and how capable it is.
...
Any thoughts?
1) People/companies seem to want complete solution like JBoss, Zope,
Rails etc
I don't know them as I don't use any but as far as I know there's no
complete package for web app development in Perl. We know we can get
everything, but just look at the list of stuff I use: apache, perl,
mod_perl, postgres, Embperl, Apache::Session, DBI, Image::Magick,
Date::Calc, Apache::ImageMagick... I understand people get scared and go
PHP where most of it is less sofisticated but ready-to-use.
CPAN/emerge/your-package-manager can help, but you still have to decide
which of 10 different CPAN modules to use (need PDF generation? HTML
mail? web templating? etcetc), read the docs, install it, test it...
Compare it with one suplier, one source of docs, one thing to upgrade...
Perl comunity seems to be paying dearly for programming qualities of its
members... ;-) Everybody has his own prefered set of tools and would not
give it up even should somebody come up with a nice complete perl-based
web devel app - and I don't see any coming anyway...
2) There seems to be less of a traditional web (server) programing and
more of client Java/JavaScript work.
Look at this AJAX stuff... Users want more flexible and more responsive
web apps and more and more of the functionality move to the client. I'm
these days spending as much time in JavaScript as in Embperl and then
Embperl is just thin layer around SQL database with maybe a bit of XML
added to the mix. You don't even need Perl for this, any decent SQL
database can return results in XML these days...
I'm my own boss so I'm going to use Perl/Embperl for the forseeable
future because it's just fun to program it, but I don't believe there's
much future for independent web developers and I don't think big soft
houses and companies doing in-house development will use Perl-based
solutions, so I'm giving up and getting ready to switch to
PHP/Java/Python/whatever-pays-my-rent in a couple of years. Perl will
join TeX, Prolog and other technologies I loved and had to stop to use
when most of the people did so. It was good while it lasted...
If any of you guys come to Prague in next couple of years, give me a
call, we'll drink some Czech beer and remember those old heroic days of
early Embperl betas...
- Robert
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