[pm-h] RedHat patch causes slodowns on Perl

G. Wade Johnson gwadej at anomaly.org
Wed Aug 27 16:46:44 PDT 2008


On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:46:49 -0700
Chris Blanc <cblanc at dionysius.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I don't know if I've posted to this list before (insert pithy
> statement of personal disorganization) but this article made me steam
> a little:
> 
> http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/08/why_corporates_hate_perl.html

I saw this same thing in another company with a different language. In
our case, the company went through a take over and the new management
was convinced that all of the problems were due to the language in
which we did the development.

That had nothing to do with the problems, of course. But no one would
listen.

> I think everything in it is true, and I've seen this situation in 
> progress at past jobs. People like to blame the tool, and find a
> trend to purchase instead, than get down to the hard work of making
> machines do what you want them to do.

At one place that I worked, I was called upon to troubleshoot and fix a
"piece of crap Perl server" that had suddenly broken. When I tried to
find out any information about the person who wrote it or any possible
documentation, I was told that no one had touched it in about 6-7 years.

I pointed out that a server that ran every day for 6-7 years without
any maintenance could not reasonably be called a "piece of crap". That
caused a few raised eyebrows and thoughtful looks.

While I will admit that this program was certainly not a thing of
beauty, it turned out the problem was easy to fix. They had moved it to
a much faster machine that ended up violating some assumptions made in
the code. A couple days of work and it was running again without
problems.

I wonder how long that little piece of Perl will run without further
maintenance in a shop that was at least somewhat Perl-hostile.

> I'm no Perl expert, but I've applied it in enough situations where it 
> has done wonders to question the wisdom of anyone who says it's not a 
> fit solution. I do think it's a victim of its own success; the same 
> "typing error" style that makes it sometimes efficient for an expert
> can make it anathema to others, and rather than admit their
> inexpertise (or, God forbid, crack a book and figure it out) they
> blame the tool.

G. Wade
-- 
They made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor.
                            -- G'Kar - "A Late Delivery from Avalon"


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