That depends a lot on my relationship with the customer. Generally, I am being hired directly as a contractor, and so I'm a bit more direct than I would recommend if you are an employee somewhere along the line. I also don't know the background of this.

Confronted with this situation in the past, I responded this way:

I'd be more than happy to develop this in PHP for you. However, you should be aware of a few things before you finalize your decision. First, since PHP does not provide the comprehensive CPAN library, this solution will take more time to create: my quoted price will increase. Second, since PHP does not provide adequate unit-testing facilities, I will require a signed limitation of liability from you which indicates that you understand the risk; additionally, I cannot offer you flat-rate support for PHP, it is hourly only. Third, given PHP's security record and the lack of adequate testing I mentioned above, I am unable to offer you my standard warranty.

I will be happy to meet with you to discuss the details of why I must take these precautions with PHP and not with Perl, and perhaps I can address your concerns about choosing Perl for your project. Also, I would be pleased to work with you to select an alternative language if neither PHP nor Perl are appropriate for you.

I had one customer choose not to work with me ("Your PHP requirements are unreasonable." he said. His project went 250% over budget. :P). The others I've taken this approach with have typically met with me to discuss the issues. They all came away with a much higher level of comfort about Perl, even though many of them chose to take a different approach.

Ultimately, if you feel that PHP is a risk to the project, you need to go on record as saying so -- if you must use PHP despite your objections, be sure to make it the best you can, but document the problems thoroughly.

<-radiant.matrix->
A collection of thoughts and links from the minds of geeks
The Code that can be seen is not the true Code
"In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots" - Kaa's Law

In reply to Re: "Perl is the Cobol of the WWW" by radiantmatrix
in thread "Perl is the Cobol of the WWW" by fauria

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