Well, for the last ten years I've probably written upwards of 50,000 lines of Perl and less than 500 lines of C/C++. I've been working in consulting and developing services at ISPs. Mind you, I wrote a RADIUS server, DNS server and part of an Email server in Perl. And many, many miscellaneous scripts in between. Like the ones I use to apply "configuration templates" in a network with hundreds of routers.

Could I have written all of this in other languages? Sure. But then I would have to multiply those lines by a factor of at least 4.

But I digress towards Perl's strengths. Certainly, there are times when you cannot afford some of the Perl's intrinsic tradeoffs. Or perhaps, times where you don't want to distribute your source code along with your executable. Those are the two only scenarios I could think (in my area of work) where Perl could be a second rate solution.

BTW, ++ to Marza for bringing such a (IMO) good and polemic question to the table.

Best regards

-lem, but some call me fokat

In reply to Re: Is there ever a time Perl is the wrong choice? by fokat
in thread Is there ever a time Perl is the wrong choice? by Marza

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