Re: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl

I face the same problem as well... quite recently one of my colleague was asked to write a program to set up our server environment. He started to do it in shell script and asked me couple of doubts in shell scripts. I inturn asked him to do this application in perl because it will be much better.

I offered to help him in learning perl as well but he went ahead with his shell script giving lame excuses like 'perl is not a good choice because on some platforms perl is not available'. Well we use HP UX and I checked that perl was installed on both the development and production servers.)

I only wish that I had more convincing abilities so that I can convince people to learn and do perl for applications where perl is most suitable.

regards,
Abhishek.

Comment on Re: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl

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Re^2: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl by LAI (Hermit) on Mar 26, 2003 at 16:59 UTC
I would have to concede the point your coworker brought up. Why would anyone want to limit themself by writing a utility script in Perl? He's right, it doesn't run on every platform: support on C64s is shaky at best, and I can't remember seeing a single port to the VIC-20. For true cross-platform compatibility it is much better to use Unix shell scripting. Next time, educate yourself before blindly insisting that Perl is the right tool for the job. Update: Jeez, I really didn't think I had to resort to `<humour></humour>` tags... LAI `__END__`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re^2: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl by Anonymous Monk on Mar 28, 2003 at 09:31 UTC
Update: Jeez, I really didn't think I had to resort to `<humour></humour>` tags... Welcome to the Internet my friend. The man on your left is a communist grammar nazi with a loaded 9mm who is currently re-reading your post for the 8th time looking for typos. The man on your right is jaded programmer who has not slept in 72 hours, is trying to meet a deadline, consumed a near lethal dose of caffeine, and is about to be informed he's getting laid off. The man wearing the tin foil hat behind you thinks that you're a microsoft operative sent to kill him. The programmers who wrote the software you're currently using were all hooked on crack. Good luck! Some people say they fought in 'Nam. I say "so what, I posted on Perlmonks." Apologies to Denis Leary.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re^2: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl by abhishes (Friar) on Mar 27, 2003 at 14:38 UTC
>> Next time, educate yourself before blindly insisting that Perl is the right tool for the job. Our project is written in Java and I don't insist that it should be re-written in perl just because I think perl is better. I don't advocate to blindly use of any technology In this particular case, perl is the right tool for the job because we plan to support only HPUX or may be windows... and perl runs quite fine on them When I have more time, I will re-write the same program in perl and then demostrate it to my colleague on how much better the perl program is than his shell script. That is one way I hope to convince them. After reading this post I realize that I shouldn't have given the impression shell scripts suck...(When I saw if statements ending with a fi, I laughed and laughed) regards, Abhishek.	[reply]
Re^4: Convincing co-workers to learn Perl by LAI (Hermit) on Mar 27, 2003 at 18:32 UTC
Yeah, the first time I saw the if/fi construct I boggled. Even better is case/esac. I remember my prof's explanation of it: that nix shell scripting was thought up by people on lots of drugs. I don't know for sure how accurate that is, but it seems to fit. I personally am of the 'if it can be done with Perl it's probably better off done with Perl' camp. That said, nothing would ever get done without shell scripting (I am so not writing any of my rc. in Perl), but in my experience it is most useful for simpler tasks. A shell script gets bulky and unreadable pretty quickly. LAI `__END__`	[reply] [d/l]