I was wondering just now, how well perl code can cope when its under constant use. Im refering to its ability to process a lot of information and cope better than some other languages like Java or C++.

What are you qualifying as constant use? If your program is run for hours or days at a time, in a single execution, then the overhead to start perl is going to be insignificant. If you're running thousands or millions of executions of the program in a day, then yes, the time to parse is going to add up. In the case of CGIs, you can change this to the former by using mod_perl, as merlyn has already suggested. If it's not something that's a CGI, you might be able to do other similiar optimizations, like running a persistent part of the server to do the heavy lifting (in Perl, or whatever you're most efficient at programming in), and a client (in C, or something else with low execution overhead), that passes its params into the daemon/service/whatever to do its work.

Every language has its own little quirks, and sometimes, you have to think about the problems in slightly different ways to deal with it. I find that the best languages to write in are whichever ones seem the most natural to you, and don't end up frustrating you to the point where you want to beat your head against the wall. (Can anyone explain to me why VBA had a bunch of things that were full fledged functions, and others hidden as methods to a DoCmd object?)

Because of of the type of projects that I work on (dozens of files, spread across modules and programs, that share so much of their code), I like that I don't have to go back and recompile every one of my programs when I change one of the included modules. The cost of a programmer's time can add up over time -- sometimes, it's more cost effective to make the programmer more efficient than to make the software more efficient.

In reply to Re: Perl: friend or foe ? by jhourcle
in thread Perl: friend or foe ? by MonkPaul

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.