Re: OT: Server side scripting languages comparison

[Paul Scott <waterhorse@ultrasw.com>]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 09:00:21 -0600
Lance Levsen <l.levsen@pwgroup.ca> wrote:

> > the bigest problem with perl based solutions is ...perl. Perl is
> > great provided a) you already know it well, b) you never need to fix
> > it. Anyone new to scripting languages should probably not start on
> > perl if they can help it. At first it will confuse and frustrate
> > you, and eventualy render you indispensable as the only person in
> > the company with half a chance of decrypting all the perl code
> > you've written.
> > 
> > Not wanting to start a language war... all popular languages are
> > good and vise-versa... for their particular task. Everyone should
> > learn them all. I'm not convinced anything big is perls particular
> > task... but quick and dirty stuff...yeah.

I also don't want this to become a language war.

Having programmed many languages for over 35 years I pretty well agree with the above.
 
> Personally I like perl. It's way more robust then anything 
> outside of the compiled languages. 

See reference to Python below.

> It's worth knowing because 
> the applications for it are much more vast then PHP.

That's hard to argue with but many of those working app's can be called from code written in other languages.
 
> I can't speak about python, I know perl why would I need it?

Eric Raymond answered that question for me:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3882
> 
> As Craig said, and I endorse,
> 
> "why bother learning a language ( .... ) suitable for web
> applications when for about the same effort you can learn a
> general purpose language that can be used for web applications,
> systems administration, any kind of data mangling, and other
> general scripting tasks?"

Because it is so complicated compared to other languages.  I can read many other languages almost immediately but not so for Perl.  I have even read most of Programming Perl (that may not be the best place to start but I got it free for reviewing it).

Have fun and keep the comments objective,

Paul Scott