in reply to Is perl scalable?

I think for a lot of "corporate-type programers" Perl is intimidating, so they choose to believe the FUD.

The same features that make it so endearing to most of us here in the Monastery make it suspect for them:

I could go on like this, but it mostly boils down to "I have learnt Java in school, why should I learn something else" and finally to "nobody has ever been fired for using Java".

Once they believe in this, then they have to justify this cultural reaction, and come up with tons of mostly-invalid-but-serious-sounding reasons.

BTW, Amazon.com runs on Perl, CNNSI uses it a lot, I had people from Boing attend a Perl class, and sure, Yahoo is moving away from Perl, but their plan is to use ... PHP! So scalability does not seem to be a problem for some rather huge organizations.

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Yahoo is not moving away from Perl!
by perrin (Chancellor) on Dec 05, 2002 at 20:59 UTC
    They use Perl for their backend data-processing and batch work. The PHP stuff is just for stitching together a bunch of include files at request time, and it's replacing an in-house system written in C.
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Re: Re: Is perl scalable?
by Anonymous Monk on Dec 07, 2002 at 15:45 UTC
    Perl is not being used for large projects as much as PHP. Why? Because of a number of good reasons that many Perl advocates are ignoring:
    1. mod_php is easier to install than mod_perl.
    2. PHP is easier to learn than Perl.
    3. PHP is fast.
    4. PHP is powerful. You can now use PHP at the command-line. You can even use PHP for shell scripting or to build GUIs.
    5. There are not as many ways of doing things in PHP as there are in Perl. This is a positive thing for PHP if you have large projects with a large team of programmers working on code for a long time.
    6. If you need help with PHP, you go to one source: www.php.net. If you need help with Perl, you have many different websites offering different things (like documentation, modules, articles, etc).
    7. PHP is open source, but better marketed than Perl.
    8. PHP is buzzword compliant.
    I have belonged to the Perl community for some time and I don't know if anyone else is noticing this, but the same websites are always referenced when discussing large projects. These sites are etoys, Amazon, CNNSI, Slashdot, Wired, TicketMaster, and few others. How long and impressive do you think the list of sites using Java and PHP are?
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      1. mod_php is easier to install than mod_perl.
        Well, I'll give you that one..

      2. PHP is easier to learn than Perl.
        Sure, you trade power and expresiveness for simplicity. Which is why so many small projects use php and very few large projects do so.

      3. PHP is fast.
        Mod_perl is fast, c is faster then both. ASM is probably faster then c.

      4. PHP is powerful. You can now use PHP at the command-line. You can even use PHP for shell scripting or to build GUIs.
        Wow. I mean, wow man, so now php is atleast barely equivalent with every other language? Java is cmd line. Perl is cmd line. Python is cmd line. Same for guis.

      5. There are not as many ways of doing things in PHP as there are in Perl. This is a positive thing for PHP if you have large projects with a large team of programmers working on code for a long time.
        See earlier arguements about making a single programmer more powerful vs a team.

      6. If you need help with PHP, you go to one source: www.php.net. If you need help with Perl, you have many different websites offering different things (like documentation, modules, articles, etc).
        If you need documention for perl, you go to perldoc.com, or man. If you need to ask a person, you go to perlmonks.com/org

      7. PHP is open source, but better marketed than Perl.
        Thats quite possibly true. Perl needs a better PR campaign.

      8. PHP is buzzword compliant.
        Compared to what..?
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