[LUNI] Linux Programming

[Steven Lembark]

> 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".

Depends. This looks much like the situation with Linux: Most
company managers will insist that they never use it; their IT
staff will insist that they [silently] can't live without it.
Apache is another example of Darwinian Code, with a zero budget
for marketing it's the major web server on the market.

A better way to look at Java's expansion is that Sun produces
Java and Solaris. They've done their best to link the two and
release rather bad default copies of everything else (e.g.,
K&R C, perl-4 until recently). Net result is that on Sun boxes
you have to know how to install gcc and Perl (not hard) in order
to get a current, useful compilers.

Oracle's switch to including DBI as a standard tells you just
how little many vendors like Java. They are spending the energy
to switch from Java to Perl as a faster, more scaleable solution.
Ditto IBM taking over maintinence of their RDBMS' DBD modules:
they are doing it because people want DBI.

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

Perhaps not. Perl5 will be supported for 10 years at least.
It will easily take Larry & the P6 folk this and perhaps next
year to hash out the changes and even implement the most basic
part of the code. Net result is that Perl5 will have plenty of
time to keep growing.

Using modules like Perl6::Vars will also allow people to use
the new syntax w/ the old compiler and simply transisiton their
code to the new platform when it's avaiable.

Aside: If you're really into OO, Perl is the only language I
know of that allows you to treat the source code as an object
and modify its behavior.

>
> 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.

(1) HTML isn't a common GUI model?

(2) You already can on Windog: ActiveState Perl lets you run
    whatever-they're-called w/in the web page.

(3) Perl already comes on every *NIX distro there is, and
    compiling the new version is not difficult. This makes
    it fairly simple to add perl handling to your *NIX browser.

The main problem is that vendors don't ship the web
clients perl-enabled.

--
Steven Lembark                               2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing                       Chicago, IL 60647
                                            +1 800 762 1582