Gentlemonks,

Perl has recently come under fire here at work, because the general consensus is that Perl's only cut out for small admin tools. The jabs I've heard go along the lines of "sure, but try to write a complex server using Perl!".

Frankly I don't know how to respond. I suppose if I had the inclination and time I'd write a complex server in Perl "just to show 'em!", but I have neither. Perhaps someone can point me at some Perl contender programs?

Thanks all. And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Updated after reading post from Neil Watson:

Our company is half Delphi, half Java, with me on the Java side. The chief deprecator is a C++ fan, who is a nice guy and quite a good designer too. He worries about code complexity, maintenance, and project scope when Perl is mentioned. Of course, I told him that good designers produce good code, rather than the other way around. I also informed him that the TK widget set is essentially standard with Perl (is that still true?), though Java appears to have more polished GUIs.

It seems that after pressing hard enough, he finally complains that, because Perl reads in its source code directly (rather than a bytecoded compiled version), it's therefore inferior to 'compiled' languages. Then he maintains his position that Perl was not meant for large application development.

'Nother update

Thanks to the responders so far -- I cobbled together a formidable list from the responses and links given so far. Thank you very much!

  • Spamassassin is Perl.

  • Motorola uses it to test their base-stations by simulating a telco switch. In fact, that tool was used at Ground-Zero to look for cellphone signals. A group-leader strapped a portable base-station on his back and they connected a laptop to it running Cygwin.

  • Perl makes over M$100/year for MasterCard as a reporting tool for their business customers. In that group, it replaced a Visual C++ app. A Java app was written to replace it, but the Java developers are now learning Perl.

  • Another company is using it as a major driver of new sales. They expect around 40% of new sales to benefit directly from Perl apps. They're a M$100+ company, with less than 200 employees, most of which are not IT.

  • Lists of apps and success stories are at: here and here.

  • The Radius server is in Perl.

  • This company translates PDF documents with Perl

  • Then there's Webmin, which uses Perl and Java together.

  • And, of course, a 100% Perl HTTP webserver: small, lightweight, reliable, and secure.


    Yet Another Update acomjean makes the point that 
    "I think perl gets a bad rap because if you are not familiar
with it the syntax is hard (bad I think) $_ and <> are 
confusing to those not used to them. I've used a lot of 
languages and the perl syntax still throws me sometimes.

    [download]

    He's surely correct. But I wonder if it's deeper than that. Maybe this is some kind of brain-boundary thing, where one wiring prefers one expression, and another to another.

    Programmers already know that learning a language is not trivial (if every language were like every other language, why learn a new one?). There will be unusual formations to any language (except perfectly regular ones, which are prone to being boring in my opinion).

    In Perl's case the unusual formations are the shorthand used to get things done quicker. Larry's Hypotenuses.

    And perhaps some programmers don't like shorthand (Java anyone? How about COBOL?).

    In reply to Perl applications by rje

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