First, let me preface my comments with the admission that I'm not a perl programmer. However, I do recruit a lot of perl programmers! What isn't really being discussed is that fact that new programmers often work with whatever technology allows them to cheaply get sites up and running on the web. Do a Yahoo search on "PHP web hosting" and you get 15.9 million links. Do the same search for "mod_perl web hosting" and you get 374,000. Still a lot, but you get the point. Until people can pick a cheap, reliable, and well-known hosting service where mod_perl is one of the main options, you limit your ability to attract new programmers. Go after the hosting companies with a complete mod_perl "package" that will be attractive to their clients. You might convince people if they had mod_perl as an easy choice (??). Perhaps I'm being a bit too simplistic, but I really like to recruit the young, talented, and eager people. I find they often use the tools that present themselves to them at the right time in their growing career.
I also pulled this Perl-Users digest from http://www.mit.edu:8008/bloom-picayune.mit.edu/perl/23077 so I want to give full credit. It makes a similar point but with additional details that may be of value. As would be expected, Garry received a fair amount of well, response, to his comments, but you can check out the full digest if you'd like. Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 5298 Volume: 10 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thu Jul 31 11:10:33 2003 ) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 08:10:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Perl-Users Digest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Perl-Users Digest) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:24:59 +0100 From: Garry Heaton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Web development and Perl 6 Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm web developer who's been usinng Perl/CGI.pm for a while before switching to PHP. IMHO if Perl 6 doesn't come with some kind of SDK for web developoment, ie. at least a templating system, then it will become increasingly marginalised in the web development world due to the proliferation of PHP within modestly priced hosting deals. It's not enough to say mod_perl/Embperl/Mason or whatever for the simple reason that many new web developers and teachers use cheap hosting deals which invariably come fully configured with PHP/MySQL and nothing more than standard Perl/CGI.pm. These hosts won't consider running mod_perl or any templatinng system. In fact I've come across many more expensive hosting deals with similar constraints regarding Perl. mod_perl is too great a risk for shared hosting environments. Perl is in too many bits and pieces, at least where web development is concerned. DBI, DBD::mysql, mod_perl, Mason/Embperl. That's a non-starter with most hosting deals so you're average web developer turns to PHP which usually comes fully optimised without the need for additional modules. I'm talking about basic bread and butter database website work here, not LWP jobs. Perl started out as a sysadmin tool but there's no reason to stay in that niche now we have Perl 6 on the way. If we don't seize the chance to bundle a proper web development SDK with Perl 6 PHP will just become the de facto server-side scripting language for web development. Garry Heaton -- Report problems: http://perl.apache.org/bugs/ Mail list info: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/modperl.html List etiquette: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/email-etiquette.html
