[LUNI] Linux Programming

[scott thomason]

On Mar 08 09:33 AM, Richard Reina wrote:
> I bet if you had done that search a year or two ago it would have been 
> 22 hits for perl and 200 for Java.  What will it be a year or two from 
> today?  People are figuring out that java - as you yourself say -- 
> doesn't make sense for a lot of tasks.  IMHO this trend will continue.

I sincerely hope you're right. A few years back I bought one of the "fat"
books to teach myself Java. I set it aside in disgust when I realized I
couldn't simply compare strings to each other w/o explicitly invoking a
method (and of course, there are many similar frustrations). 

As far as the trends go, though... Perl's been around about five years
or so longer than Java; Perl lacks the marketing ooomph that Sun provides
for IT management; Perl is about to undergo changes radical enough to
almost call it a different language. One could speculate that:

1. Perl has already had ample opportunity to prove itself, but the 
overwhelming press that Java has behind it provides yet another case of
"the best marketed tool wins".

2. Further adoption/expansion of Perl will slow because of confusion
created by the v5/v6 split, leaving Java a better opportunity to grow.

Finally, there's always that one niggling fact that keeps me thinking
I might bear down and master Java yet: thin-client apps. It's darn
handy to have the Java runtime embedded into a web browser. I'd give 
my left leg (figuratively, don't get excited!) to have a) a common
GUI model built into Perl, and b) the whole mess installed with the
browser.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I hope more employers move to Perl, but I'm
just not as positive it will happen as you are.
---scott