From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Wed Dec 11 20:23:54 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:41 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
Message-ID: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
I haven't noticed much traffic on this list lately, so I thought I'd
attempt some discussion.
I. What has been your general experience with getting projects
started using Perl?
I've encountered more than a bit of reservation on two counts:
(neither is technical)
1. "Perl is free, so it doesn't have any support."
2. "We'll never find any Perl programmers to maintain it. But, we
can always find qw/Java C++ .Net VisualBasic/ programmers."
I've been able to point to various support systems around the Net to
answer #1. But, #2 has been harder. I'm hoping this list will help in
that direction.
II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
1. C++ - sometimes I need to work at a lower level than Perl.
2. Forth - my former employer used it extensively.
3. Java - requested for an project.
G. Wade
--
That which does not kill me makes me stranger. -- Larry Wall
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Wed Dec 11 22:52:03 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:41 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
References: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
Message-ID: <200212112252.04413.kevin@shaum.com>
On Wednesday 11 December 2002 08:23 pm, houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
> 1. "Perl is free, so it doesn't have any support."
> 2. "We'll never find any Perl programmers to maintain it. But, we
> can always find qw/Java C++ .Net VisualBasic/ programmers."
>
> I've been able to point to various support systems around the Net to
> answer #1. But, #2 has been harder. I'm hoping this list will help in
> that direction.
You might point out how much web programming is done in Perl, and how many web
developers are looking for work these days. Sad to say, there's a lot of
truth to that.
You might also point to the activity levels on CPAN, or traffic on
Perl-related Usenet groups, as indicators of the amount of Perl programming
going on. Compare the latter to the traffic levels on qw{Java C++ .Net VB}
newsgroups.
> II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
>
> 1. C++ - sometimes I need to work at a lower level than Perl.
> 2. Forth - my former employer used it extensively.
> 3. Java - requested for an project.
Python - I needed to do a joint project with another developer, and it was the
only scripting language we could agree on. (I don't dislike Python, BTW; but
using regexes in Python is needlessly inconvenient, since they are not part
of the language syntax as with Perl. And I miss not having "use strict".)
Java and JavaScript - we need to do do some client-side processing (though I'm
only peripherally involved in this part of our system).
--
Kevin Shaum -- http://kevin.shaum.com/
kevin@shaum.com -- http://lazypundit.com/
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Wed Dec 11 23:31:06 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:41 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: <200212112252.04413.kevin@shaum.com>
References: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
<200212112252.04413.kevin@shaum.com>
Message-ID: <20021211233106.67a47d2f.gwadej@anomaly.org>
On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 22:52:03 -0600
houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 December 2002 08:23 pm, houston-admin@mail.pm.org
> wrote:
> > 1. "Perl is free, so it doesn't have any support."
> > 2. "We'll never find any Perl programmers to maintain it. But, we
> > can always find qw/Java C++ .Net VisualBasic/ programmers."
> >
> > I've been able to point to various support systems around the Net to
> > answer #1. But, #2 has been harder. I'm hoping this list will help
> > in that direction.
>
> You might point out how much web programming is done in Perl, and how
> many web developers are looking for work these days. Sad to say,
> there's a lot of truth to that.
Good point, except... many of those are ASP or ColdFusion developers
or FrontPage people. I haven't found that to be as
convincing as it should be.
> You might also point to the activity levels on CPAN, or traffic on
> Perl-related Usenet groups, as indicators of the amount of Perl
> programming going on. Compare the latter to the traffic levels on
> qw{Java C++ .Net VB} newsgroups.
I've pointed that out. But, the issue normally moves back to how many
of them are here in Houston.
> > II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
> >
> > 1. C++ - sometimes I need to work at a lower level than Perl.
> > 2. Forth - my former employer used it extensively.
> > 3. Java - requested for an project.
>
> Python - I needed to do a joint project with another developer, and it
> was the only scripting language we could agree on. (I don't dislike
> Python, BTW; but using regexes in Python is needlessly inconvenient,
> since they are not part of the language syntax as with Perl. And I
> miss not having "use strict".)
>
> Java and JavaScript - we need to do do some client-side processing
> (though I'm only peripherally involved in this part of our system).
>
> --
> Kevin Shaum -- http://kevin.shaum.com/
> kevin@shaum.com -- http://lazypundit.com/
Thanks for the thoughts.
Anybody else?
G. Wade
--
I have this feeling, that my luck is none too good.
-- "Black Blade", Blue Oyster Cult
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Wed Dec 11 22:05:28 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:41 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:23:54 CST."
<20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
Message-ID: <200212120405.gBC45SU06715@moya.tamu.edu>
houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
>I haven't noticed much traffic on this list lately, so I thought I'd
>attempt some discussion.
>
>I. What has been your general experience with getting projects
> started using Perl?
In house - no problem. I work with (and act as one myself) unix sys
admins. Perl is pretty much expected.
>I've encountered more than a bit of reservation on two counts:
>(neither is technical)
>
> 1. "Perl is free, so it doesn't have any support."
> 2. "We'll never find any Perl programmers to maintain it. But, we
> can always find qw/Java C++ .Net VisualBasic/ programmers."
>
>I've been able to point to various support systems around the Net to
>answer #1. But, #2 has been harder. I'm hoping this list will help in
>that direction.
Sounds like `they' are stressing quantity over quality. Quantity
leads to lower salaries, of course (all other things being equal,
which they aren't). It's almost like the romance novel industry
vs. the literary novel industry. Romance novelists are a dime a
dozen because they are expected to write to an outline provided by
the publisher -- they want interchangable authors. Readers buy
romance novels by brand instead of by author. Literary novelists
are individuals and are read because of who the author is, not
because of the imprint.
>II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
Shell (sh) - gets simple jobs done
TeX/LaTeX - papers / documents
XSLT - XML transformations / web applications
Tcl - because that's what the vendor supported
PHP - because that's what the vendor supported
Past languages:
C/C++ - school projects and code before I learned Perl
Forth - for fun
Lisp - interesting ideas, but very limited experience
TMS9900 assembly (and machine code) - for fun (in the TI 99/4A)
Pascal (UCSD p-System) - on the ol' TI where I first encountered
threading and semaphores
Basic - my first computer language
--
James Smith , 979-862-3725
Texas A&M CIS Operating Systems Group, Unix
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Thu Dec 12 02:49:45 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
Message-ID: <20021212084945.91078.qmail@web21209.mail.yahoo.com>
[ I. What has been your general experience with
getting projects started using Perl? ]
My personal experiance has been difficult. I didn't
have a way to use it effectively at my last job
(Compaq). My new job (www.int.com) is the perfect
place to use it, but I have been constrained by the
powers that be to user Perl only for my little
internal web site. I would like to be able to use it
for some more heavy duty internal apps, but the answer
has always been no.
[ II. What other languages do you program in besides
Perl and why? ]
in no particular order.
1. Bash, sh (Used extensively at work now)
2. C (Testing my Company's Widgets)
7. C++ (Testing my Company's Geoscience Toolkits)
8. Perl (Woohooo! Just for fun, and Internal Website)
9. Java (Testing my Company's Java Geoscience
Toolkits, and for fun)
Kristofer A. Hoch
__________________________________________________
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From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Thu Dec 12 11:31:22 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
References: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
Message-ID: <004e01c2a204$5c391950$4701a8c0@eurynome>
> I. What has been your general experience with getting projects
> started using Perl?
>
Really, I haven't had a great deal of problems attempting to get new
projects started using Perl, but I'm rather aggressive and often (overly)
confident. The only time I ever really had any issues regarding languages,
was working at Questia, where the product development department was heavily
entrenched in Java, and (myself working in Technical Services) assumed that
we couldn't do anything nearly as effectively as they could. It didn't take
me long to prove them wrong.
On some cases, however, I've been forced to make some changes to the way I
look at programming, and what type of programming I do. This summer, after
having been out-of-work for some time, I almost broke down and went to work
for a MS-Partner, however, I was able to convince them that although they do
nothing but COM and .NET, I was able to do both of those in Perl. But, this
became a moot point as we were able to get our own company off the ground.
One of the big points I like to make is that we can prototype it in Perl,
and refactor it in C, Java, or whatnot if they find the performance lacking.
Not once has any project been refactored through. It seems that the
well-known efficiency of prototyping in Perl comes to win here. In most
cases, as long as the prototype fulfills all of their performance and
functionality requirements, they are unlikely to spend extra money
re-writing it.
As far as finding perl programmers, I'm not sure what the difficulty is
here. Well, finding *experienced* perl programmers is rather difficult, but
finding them in general has never been a problem for me. It seems that
almost every admin in the now-mostly-defunct ISP industry had to learn perl,
and while they often aren't the most proficient, they tend to pick it up
pretty rapidly (at least, the ones I work with now). However, it does seem
that a lot of perl programmers I've met lately don't feel a need to learn
the basic concepts of programming that are not specific to perl, much less
OOP or any sort of architecture. This is a problem that I think we managers
and architects have to address, through training.
> II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
I've been known to use:
Tcl/Tk (ok, so I worked for one of the authors of Ext. Tcl many moons ago,
otherwise, I probably wouldn't touch it)
Sh/Bash/Tcsh scripting (comes in handy every day, although I never use grep,
sed, or awk anymore =)
C/C++ (mostly for inlining into perl, or writing XS -- I'm not very
proficient at C/C++)
ColdFusion (I had to lead a group of CF developers once, I figured that I
should know the 'language' they use...)
Apple Basic was my first language
!c
C. Church
http://www.digitalKOMA.com/church/
http://www.DroneColony.com/
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Thu Dec 12 15:54:34 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: <200212120405.gBC45SU06715@moya.tamu.edu>
References: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
<200212120405.gBC45SU06715@moya.tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <20021212155434.5225e5ed.gwadej@anomaly.org>
On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 22:05:28 -0600
houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
> >I've encountered more than a bit of reservation on two counts:
> >(neither is technical)
> >
> > 1. "Perl is free, so it doesn't have any support."
> > 2. "We'll never find any Perl programmers to maintain it. But, we
> > can always find qw/Java C++ .Net VisualBasic/ programmers."
> >
> >I've been able to point to various support systems around the Net to
> >answer #1. But, #2 has been harder. I'm hoping this list will help in
> >that direction.
>
>
> Sounds like `they' are stressing quantity over quality. Quantity
> leads to lower salaries, of course (all other things being equal,
> which they aren't). It's almost like the romance novel industry
> vs. the literary novel industry. Romance novelists are a dime a
> dozen because they are expected to write to an outline provided by
> the publisher -- they want interchangable authors. Readers buy
> romance novels by brand instead of by author. Literary novelists
> are individuals and are read because of who the author is, not
> because of the imprint.
>
Believe me, I've made these arguments before (about Perl and another
language). But, part of their argument _is_ accurate. If they cannot
find any people with the skill in question, how can they justify
depending on it.
I _think_ that there is probably a reasonable-sized Perl community
here in Houston. I'd just like to be able to point to it. Hopefully
this group will help on this point.
> >II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
>
> Shell (sh) - gets simple jobs done
> TeX/LaTeX - papers / documents
> XSLT - XML transformations / web applications
> Tcl - because that's what the vendor supported
> PHP - because that's what the vendor supported
>
> Past languages:
> C/C++ - school projects and code before I learned Perl
> Forth - for fun
> Lisp - interesting ideas, but very limited experience
> TMS9900 assembly (and machine code) - for fun (in the TI 99/4A)
> Pascal (UCSD p-System) - on the ol' TI where I first encountered
> threading and semaphores
> Basic - my first computer language
Well...if we're going to include past languages.
General Purpose
C, C++, Forth, Perl, Java, Basic Plus, FORTRAN, Lisp,
Pascal (a little), SmallTalk (a little)
Currently Learning
Python, Java
Text Manipulation
LaTex/TeX, DocBook, m4, AWK, troff/nroff
Special Purpose
lex/flex, yacc/bison/occs, bash, command.com batch, 4nt batch, make
Web
HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, XSLT
> --
> James Smith , 979-862-3725
> Texas A&M CIS Operating Systems Group, Unix
> _______________________________________________
> Houston mailing list
> Houston@mail.pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston
>
Later,
G. Wade
--
"Zathras have very sad life. Probably also have sad death. But at least
there is symmetry." -- Zathras
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Fri Dec 13 19:46:02 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Perl programming in Houston
In-Reply-To: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
References: <20021211202354.4659f71e.gwadej@anomaly.org>
Message-ID: <20021213194602.1cab33fd.ajackson@oplnk.net>
On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:23:54 -0600
houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
> I haven't noticed much traffic on this list lately, so I thought I'd
> attempt some discussion.
>
> I. What has been your general experience with getting projects
> started using Perl?
>
Since I'm not really a programmer, I just do it! 8-) I'm a research
geophysicist. However, we do now distribute an official copy of
perl and perl/Tk worldwide (along with other open source favorites, Tcl,
gcc, ImageMagick, vim, etc).
>
> II. What other languages do you program in besides Perl and why?
>
c/c++ (for numerical calculations)
fortran
PostScript (one of my CPAN contributions)
Tcl/Tk
SAS
and I won't go into history - though I did use Basic 32 years ago!
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Alan K. Jackson | To see a World in a Grain of Sand |
| alan@ajackson.org | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, |
| www.ajackson.org | Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand |
| Houston, Texas | And Eternity in an hour. - Blake |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Sun Dec 15 08:59:41 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Holiday plans -- Important!
Message-ID: <200212150859.42506.kevin@shaum.com>
I got a call from my parents this morning: my grandmother passed away last
night.
The services will be later this week, unknown precisely when. I expect to
drive up during the week, and stay through Chrstmas, probably driving back
the 26th or 27th.
--
Kevin Shaum -- http://kevin.shaum.com/
kevin@shaum.com -- http://lazypundit.com/
From houston-admin at mail.pm.org Sun Dec 15 09:04:11 2002
From: houston-admin at mail.pm.org (houston-admin@mail.pm.org)
Date: Mon Aug 2 21:30:42 2004
Subject: [HoustonTx.pm] Holiday plans -- Important!
In-Reply-To: <200212150859.42506.kevin@shaum.com>
References: <200212150859.42506.kevin@shaum.com>
Message-ID: <200212150904.11706.kevin@shaum.com>
On Sunday 15 December 2002 08:59 am, houston-admin@mail.pm.org wrote:
> I got a call from my parents this morning: my grandmother passed away last
> night.
>
> The services will be later this week, unknown precisely when. I expect to
> drive up during the week, and stay through Chrstmas, probably driving back
> the 26th or 27th.
Sorry, this got sent tot he wrong address. I'm a bit upset just now.
--
Kevin Shaum -- http://kevin.shaum.com/
kevin@shaum.com -- http://lazypundit.com/