[ILUG]dismissal-of-perl-for-bad-reasons bashing (was PHP/mysql content management system)

[Dave O Connor]

John Allman said on Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 05:36:47PM +0000:
> Dont get me wrong. I use perl regularly and believe it has it's place. 
> My main problem with it in this context is probably that there are just 
> *so* many ways of writing perl. Reading and working out somebody elses 
> code can and usually does take a horribly long time. Especially if they 
> think differently than you and use the language in a different way.

Very true, but I think that on the other hand, it's a much more fluid
language. Yes, it takes a certain mindset to be able to understand some code,
but I find that coming into a new perl project, youy can look at the code and
really see what the original author was 'getting at'. Whereas with PHP,
although a little more structured, it's a lot more concrete. I guess it's a
case of aesthetics in code, if such a thing exists :) (Notice I don't mention
Java. Probably because a large percentage of java is copied and pasted from
somewhere else, examples in javadocs, and newsgroups. I'm convinced there's a
poor work placement guy in Sun sitting there writing all the original Java
code in thw world, and deviously disseminating it in example form to newsgroups
and documentation).

> And 
> even perl's HTML::Template, though occasionally useful, is no match for 
> the way you can slap php right into a page. I like that. Maybe it's 
> possible to do with perl - i dont know. 

mod_perl can do that. I haven't used it in yonks, though.

> Not enjoying hacking someone 
> elses perl is enough of a reason to put me off. Besides - you're right. 
> It's mostly a gut reaction and i'm just arguing in order to justify it. 
> But i generally go with my gut (it tells me when to eat - it has to be 
> fairly reliable)

Oh, if PHP is what you know, then go for it. It's a case of adding up the pros
and cons. And I all too often see "perl's a messy hunk of crap" as a con, for
no good reason :)
> 
> Fair enough. So - anything in perl you can recommend or generally just 
> being the knight in shining armour for it?
> 
The thing with Content Management is that it's such a broadly-defined
term, that everyone has their own definition (which, if you look on
freshmeat for about three seconds, usually means that everyone writes
their own, too). Alas, I've not had the unique misfortune of having to run
anything but the backend for a website in many's the year.

	- DoC