(Preface: all MO, 2c, #include disclaimer, etc.)

You bring up a number of good points here. Many of them stem from the fact that Java has oodles more money behind it -- from Sun, IBM, HP, BEA, and lots of smaller folks -- and always has. It was never in the position where it was used by a number of hardcore coders and then came into the limelight as a result of its strengths. Java was going to save the world from Microsoft, remember? How's that baggage for a new language?

For the first time in a while, there are a actually number of solid Perl application server projects out there -- Mason, OpenFrame, Bricolage, Slash, but of course the one I'd point out is OpenInteract :-) The fact that you don't know about them speaks volumes -- it's really hard to let people know what's out there, to differentiate between what's usable right now and what's still in deep alpha. O'Reilly kinda functions as a central authority for Perl stuff, but they don't have the $$ to drown people in literature and knickknacks, nor the resources to go out and really beat the bushes for success stories.

One of the problems we have regarding advocacy is that we don't think like marketing people. They know they have to repeat a story a hundred times before it sticks. When someone disses Perl, we can bring up a number of high-profile, high-demand sites and projects: IMDB, Salon, British Telecom, or any of the other success stories on the O'Reilly site. But many geeks don't have the tenacity or the brashness frequently (but not solely) borne of ignorance that many marketing folks have.

Another thing marketing people do is focus on actual solutions rather than potential solutions, on products rather than infrastructure. (I know I'm terribly guilty of this with OpenInteract.) Put another way: how much legitimacy do you think PHP gained when Sourceforge became popular?

mod_perl, for all its strengths, is not an application server. It's a solid base for one but it doesn't provide the toolkit people have in mind when they think about an application server. So every time someone says, "Where are the application servers for Perl?" and we respond with "mod_perl," we sell ourselves short. Someone doing a little investigation will think we don't know what we're talking about and just move on, missing a whole body of great work.

So where does this leave us? I still think that denigrating another language is one of the best ways I know to alienate people. I think if we wanted to help the cause, we'd make it easy for people to build applications (even simple ones) very quickly and provide the tools to build complicated ones along the way. We'd build a new SourceForge in Perl and show how much better it is than the PHP version. We'd write up our own success stories and send them to ORA, or talk to our local users groups about some of the cool projects we've done or found. Because the difference between advocating Perl and Java is that we have to do the work rather than the big corporations, and our currency is time and passion rather than money.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode