[pm-h] RedHat patch causes slodowns on Perl

Chris Blanc cblanc at dionysius.com
Thu Aug 28 07:39:13 PDT 2008


Wade,

I think that's part of the problem: much of the web runs on Perl code, 
but it works, so it rarely makes headlines.

Echoing other comments here, I think it's more important to have a 
general purpose language be widely known by people informed enough to 
write specialized code, that to drown in specialized languages that at 
the end of the day are more often "trend" than "innovation."

Chris

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 06:46:44PM -0500, G. Wade Johnson wrote:
> 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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-- 

http://www.dionysius.com/
Internet intoxication.

http://www.chrisblanc.org/blog/
You know: stuff; insightful +2


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