[BNE-PM] What do you use Perl for?

Derek Thomson derek at wedgetail.com
Thu Aug 22 21:03:44 CDT 2002


Tony Obermeit wrote:
>> Of course if you wanted to start a real flame war you might start 
>> talking about creating web applications under IIS/ASP. After all, this 
>> technology probably has more market share than java. You could 
>> probably use all the same arguments for using ASP as those for using 
>> java (eg packaging, distributed source code etc).
> 
> 
> Interestingly, organisations such as Gartner and the Meta Group list 
> J2EE and .NET as the only two architectures to be considered in the 
> Enterprise space.  Other technologies don't get a mention any more.  

I wonder why? What is this term "Enterprise", anyway? I've yet to see a 
definition that wasn't "what we're hyping this quarter". Why isn't C++ 
or Perl, or anything else, on that list? Puzzling ...

It's also interesting that J2EE makes the list, but CORBA doesn't. 
Considering the "Enterprise" in J2EE is EJB, and that's just a design 
pattern running over CORBA (CORBA IIOP is the on-the-wire protocol, and 
JTS is a rebadged CORBA OTS for example).

And yes, Don, that's the answer to your "no-one uses CORBA" jab at the 
meeting - everyone *does*, they just don't know it anymore. That's why 
the Perl ORB is going to be so cool ... the whole idea of using and 
implementing EJBs in Perl is, well, going to break a few preconceptions. 
If I get it that far, that is :)

> Mind you, it is with .NET that perl fits in to that equation with Active 
> State''s .NET implementation of perl.  Has anyone used that?  Is it a 
> viable perl product?

I do know that Python.NET was DOA. It was just enough to show simple 
examples, but to all practical uses utterly worthless, compared to the 
wonderousness that is Jython (Python on a JVM).

Since Perl is much more complex than Python, I'd be suprised if Perl.NET 
came to anything.

The other problem is that the "common typing" mechanism in dotnet is 
biased towards static languages such as C++, Java and C#. If you wanted 
to do "real" Perl in dotnet you'd lose the ability for your objects to 
interoperate with the other dotnet languages - which was the whole point 
(same goes for Python, LISP, etc).

Regards,
Derek.





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