Phoenix.pm: Perl Advocacy

sinck at ugive.com sinck at ugive.com
Fri Jan 19 08:39:12 CST 2001



\_ He is interested in it but has some reservations about converting
\_ our entire system to perl. I have already used perl to solve some
\_ really sticky problems in our system so he knows that perl can do
\_ the job. His concerns are about the longevity and viability of perl
\_ as a language. Will it be around in two years? Who maintains it? If
\_ we update our database, where do we get new drivers? Who supports
\_ it? That kind of thing.


\_ So my question to you is, if you were in my place, what resources would you 
\_ point your boss to in order to improve his/her comfort level with perl as a 
\_ real world solution?

First, there's probably a perl advocacy howto floating around
someplace offa the main websites. You might also get mileage out of
the linux advocacy howto.

As to your particular questions:

The language is available and will be around indefinitely, however
porting it run on the OS and hardware of your choice in 10 years might
be better left to the robotic programmer assistant.  :-)

The community maintains it, which is it's strength and weakness.  If
you discover a big or interesting problem with something, you'll
prolly have lots of eyeballs looking at it.  If it's less glamorous,
the community might not even notice you (worst case).

Updating drivers depends on your database, your interface, and the
phase of the moon.  Please keep changes to all three to a minimum.  If
you named the database, that would help give a more specific answer.

Support is offered commercially through several places, talk to
google.  Before, I'd say pick up TPJ anad flip through it, but that's
not quite a viable solution.

The biggest thing to consider here is not the technical whizbang
features like herds of regexen grepping slowly across the data plains,
but things *managers* care about, some of which you have already shown
here:


cost
accountability
maintainability
productivity increase
liability factors


Think like a manager who wants the bottom line to be better this year
than last....  If you can't make a good case based on those factors,
it's probably best not to argue.  :-)

David



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