Quote:
Originally Posted by
unclecameron
It sounds like perl might be a little more versatile still (from what I'm hearing) for both scripting on up through web apps?
UncleCameron: Yes. This is an excellent point, and you stated clearly. One of the great advantages of Perl is that it can go toe-to-toe with awk and sed for command-line work; toe-to-toe with BASH/KSH/etc.. for system scripts; go toe-to-toe with PHP for web development; and go toe-to-toe with Python and even Java for Full-Fledged Systems Development.
That versatility is perhaps Perl's greatest strength. I can write any awk one-liner just as quickly and efficiently with perl. I can write a cronjob or the like just quickly and effciently as Shell. I can write a web app just as quickly and efficiently as PHP or Ruby. And I can even write very large scale systems stuff that will run with Java any day.
What other tool has such flexibilty? None. Detractors of Perl will say it tries to be everything and fails at each of it. They never seem to back it up. Perl One-Liners are ofter *better* than awk; perl scripts are almost always better than their BASH equivalent. Perl Web App are often better than their PHP or Python equivalents. etc. And there is massive proof for this.
Moreover. Perl has the most *dedicated and caring community* of all programming languages. As I mentioned before, no language has had as many smart and talented people give so much of their time willingly.
Perl 6 has struggled to say the least and went off track. Perl6 really *did* bite off a bit too much and has lacked a direction. We should all be running it now, in a perfect world. As a result Perl fell off in some important new areas of practical computing like MVC. Too many people care passionately about Perl to let this go on, and are working everyday to fix it.
Frankly, I am extremely disappointed with the moderator's post, in which he engaged in straight up "Linux vs. BSD vs. WIndows" type discussion with no substance and plenty of misplaced condescension. I hope his colleagues will give him a warning for a clear violation his own forum's rules
( I'm just sick to death of hearing Perl sucks and is useless; when it is runs a significant percent of the entire world's financial transactions. ) Barclays, BofA, Credit Suisse, and others all Use Perl; )