application and web app technologies

[Matt Garrish]

<cartercc at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1136306578.271826.302110 at g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> It might help if you elaborated on what these "doubts" are. It doesn't 
>> sound
>> like you know any of the languages you've listed and are hoping that 
>> somehow
>> you'll find one magical beast by cross-posting to a bunch of groups. I 
>> don't
>> expect you're going to have much luck.
>
> No, we don't know any of these languages. I'm reasonably competent in
> Perl, and I have used some Java and Python (and taught C++ a loooong
> time ago but have never actually written any C++). The problem is that
> none of us can compare apples to apples, even though we more or less
> can do what needs to be done with the tools we know.
>
> I don't expect the 'magical beast.' What I do expect is several posts
> along the following lines: 'We faced a similar situation, and used X,
> Y, and Z. X proved the best choice because of reasons A, B, and C. The
> problem with Y was D and the problem with Z was E.'
>

But that's what makes it impossible to give you any meaningful advice: every 
situation is different. Without being intimate with your architecture and 
what exactly web scripting and admin scripting means to you, it's nearly 
impossible to give vanilla advice about what language to use. You also need 
to bear in mind the skill set at your disposal. If no one knows the language 
you want to use, do you have time to account for the learning curve? Do you 
really want to try and replace all your programmers?

In Perl's defence, bad programmers write bad Perl code. There is nothing 
about the language that makes for unreadable code, only how you choose to 
write it. Going OO should be a no-brainer if you stay with Perl (just for 
the maintenance savings alone), but regardless of which language you choose 
you should have your programmers develop an accepted style (everything from 
how to name functions to how to structure your code library). If you let 
programmers build their own little universes they will!

>> That said, Perl is still one of the best choices for both Web and admin
>> scripting, and I don't see that you'd gain anything by rewriting all of 
>> your
>> existing code to Ruby or Python just for the sake of saying you now use 
>> Ruby
>> or Python (not that there's anything wrong with either, but why rewrite 
>> code
>> for the sake of rewriting it?).
>
> I agree with you about Perl, and CPAN is a fab resource, but the reason
> we need to rewrite the code is because (1) it doesn't work (due to
> external changes) and (2) it takes us less time to write new routines
> that it does to decypher the old ones and modify them.

That's again a sign of poor documentation coupled with bad style. It will 
always take a while to get back into your code, no matter what language you 
use. If you maintain consistency as you go, however, it eases a lot of the 
curve when you have to go back. You should probably look at other measures 
that involve your programmers more in making the coding a collective 
practice (peer review, for example). So long as the focus is constructive, 
it will help the group better understand what they should all be striving 
for and what they should all be doing. That more than anything will help 
prevent you from winding up in the same mess in a few years when you 
discover each person has their own coding ideas for whatever language you 
opt for.

Matt