Bjorern's statements below are consistent with my experiences with perl.
Our web sites which number around 10 (that I have been involved with in
some capacity) typically number around 50K lines of code. We use perl
exclusively.
Experience, modularity and change control can go a long way. I have
noticed no increase in the 'spagetti quality' since converting to
mod_perl.
Thomas S. Brettin
Staff Member
Bioscience Division, MS-M888
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
505-665-3334
On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Ask Bjoern Hansen wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2000, Michael Nachbaur wrote:
>
> [...]
> > This site will have major traffic, will need to be extended and
> > changed (a lot), and needs to scale very well. My experience with
> > Perl (as well as what I've heard from other developers) is that Perl
> > turns to spaghetti rapidly once you hit the 10,000 line mark. I know
> > Perl can handle the performance. What are your experiences with
> > extendability and readability of code?
>
> That Perl works very well in those areas.
>
> The slightly longer story: At ValueClick we have far more than 10000 lines
> of code (can't find an easy way to make a count right now, but I think
> it's about 50000, highly reused and moduarlized and what have you not).
> Our site served about 100 million dynamic impressions yesterday, mod_perl
> in the front end and all our backend applications are in Perl too.
>
> Bad programmers will screw up code in any languge. The "problem" for Perl
> is just that it takes a lot less to get productive and useful, which puts
> more less experienced people to the code. At ValueClick we're getting
> pretty far with having our version control system sending mail to everyone
> on the team with the diff everytime someone commits. That way no change
> goes unnoticed and it makes it easy for the more experienced to catch
> mistakes and give advice to the less experienced.
>
> But this topic goes far beyond the scope of this mailinglist. :)
>
> To not end up with a mess of a code pile and development process, your
> usual deal of good practices and methods applies for any language,
> including Perl.
>
> Favorite books on the topic includes the mythical man month
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201835959/asksplayground and
> "Rapid Development - Taming Wild Software Schedules"
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556159005/asksplayground (yup,
> it's a MicroSoft product, but it's truly recommended).
>
>
> - ask
>
> --
> ask bjoern hansen - <http://www.netcetera.dk/~ask/>
> more than 70M impressions per day, <http://valueclick.com>
>
>
