You're absolutely right, and I could have used a better title.
But it seemed so appropriate - java --- bitter. :) and it's nice to see what seems to be a growing trend in the IT community that we need to have continue if we want the slightest chance of writing perl in 2-3 years... I feel that the java marketing campaign of Java As The Pure Language has to be put in its place.
Java is a language. just another language. And it has its merits. I was impressed by the speed at which I picked it up.
But something that really doesnt impress me is the following:
working in a 100% perl team in a bank (the only perl team in a company with over 5000 IT people and well over a thousand developers), we get hammered every day by the same corporate perspective:
What?? You're using perl? But don't you read the Sun/IBM advertisements, and don't you go to the (sponsored) IT conferences?
Everyone knows that Java is The Only Enterprise, Scaleable Language For The Internet
Of course we know that Java can generate great apps. But we also all know that Java is really popular because it is backed by giant marketign campaigns which are marginalising other, just as good if not better, languages.
And this is why I posted this article and smiled.
I've been told at least once a month for the last two years that we need to rewrite our application in Java because the corporate powers want to go there. Then we've given a demo of the application, and then the PMs have figured out how expensive it would be to write a new version in Java (the current estimate is 3x to 5x what it cost to do in perl). And then they leave us alone for a couple of weeks, until we get hit again.
The fact of the matter is that advertizing is how decision makers are influenced, and perl has no credible entity advertizing that it is a reliable, rugged, valuable alternative.
Either this is advertized or we learn java and wish we could use regexes. have you looked around to see how many contracting or permie postings even _mention_ perl on the job boards? Unless we accept that perl is dead, which I find really hard to do, then maybe bad press for the other languages (you know - the ones that don't feed us?) is a good thing.
Anyways, the article made me laugh, but I appreciate your point.
BTW, please don't misunderstand me. think that the ad campaigns for Java are great ideas and do good things. as far as marketing goes, IBM and Sun are doing an excellent job of cornering an industry, and I applaud them for it.
Hackmare
