Gunther Birznieks wrote:
> You don't have to be top 15th percentile VB or top 15th percentile Java to
> write ASPs or Servlets respectively. Although for servlets, I would say
> top 50th at least if you don't want a completely crappy OO servlet
> architecture.
I have organized a series of personnel trainings in a number of huge
French companies, and I have been constantly trying to spread the
mod_perl word and look at people's reaction.
If I talk about mod_perl on Monday:
A young computer genius (you know the kind of guy who will build his own
company when he is 25) will return to the training on Tuesday with the
Eagle book in his hands.
A well-placed VB script programmer just won't care. He will get very
nervous when I pronounce "Unix".
A convinced Java programmer will desperately seek for equivalent
functions for Enterprise Java Beans, CORBA, RMI, etc, then he will just
shrug his shoulders.
A decision maker will sleep until I say "performance". He will
completely wake up when I bring up statistics from Stas' guide. Then he
will ask me if I am willing to come back next week to give a profound
training on mod_perl, and then he will never call me back.
As I understand the companies' philosophy, mod-perl's advantages that we
bring up here are actually DRAWBACKS for them, as compared to VB Script.
They used to find immediate solutions for an immediate contract. When I
ask a question to a Perl or Java developer, most of the time he can
explain me the whole theory behind it. On the contrary, a VB developer
always answers "I don't know, I have always done this way and it works".
So, a company hiring VB developers knows that these are humble and
obedient guys who will make the application work, even if an extra
semicolon will ruin the whole program. And that is perfectly OK with
such companies because they sell the product and the MAINTENANCE behind
it (they call it "maintenance", but it actually means re-writing the
whole program when the client only needs an extra semicolon).
But a good Perl programmer is more often uncontrollable, he writes a
perfect program, but no one else understands it, and if he quits the
company tomorrow they won't find anyone else to do the "maintenance".
So when I spread the mod_perl word, I make sure I don't make my client
hire another bunch of VB programmers after what I told them about
mod_perl during the training. :)))
I also tried to take individual VB/PowerBuilder/etc. guys and teach Perl
to them. Well, I can make them understand the technical side but not the
BEAUTY of Perl. Maybe I am not a perfect trainer, but after such
trainings I see these guys LITERALLY TRANSLATE their programs from VB to
Perl.
Just to make a resume, I am afraid Mod_Perl will remain an
elite-oriented product. That is not really embarassing, because the
education guidelines change too, and more and more guys switch to the
elite layer, bringing up their own projects. So if this talk is about
spreading mod_perl to the whole Internet programming community, wouldn't
it be better to say, making mod_perl THE CHOICE of the BEST Internet
projects?
Vic.
