use Perl

• scripting large systems (Score:1)

  by slanning (5049) on 2006.08.08 3:59 (#49217) Homepage Journal

  Why exactly is C supposed to be better than Perl for large systems (ignore speed of execution, assume that both can in principle satisfy your requirements)? What large-scale development advantages does it, as a language, have? What if you had raised an incredulous eyebrow and asked this gentleman, "you write large systems in *C*???" What would his response have been?

  It's kind of the thing I (try to) have in mind when I hear the word "enterprise". When a system gets big enough and lasts long enough, the development "system" or "procedures" or "workflow" has to itself be robust enough to handle people coming and going to and from the project. I could be easily convinced that some languages have some advantages or disadvantages on the scale of a larger project, but I don't see specifically what C has on Perl as a language.

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  • Define "system" (Score:2)

    by bart (450)

    I agree, writing large programs in pure C is nuts. Writing large systems in anything that doesn't have automatic garbage collection, is nuts. OTOH other people argue you should only use a strongly typed language for large systems. So, we can't all agree. :)
    
    Despite the fact that he dislikes Perl, I largely agree with this guy [caltech.edu]. (I don't remember who pointed me to that article, it could easily even have been you (Ovid).)
    
    Anyway, if you define "system" as something that is really big, then I strongly feel that C
    • Jarballs better than CPAN? Haskell but no Pugs? (Score:1)

      by naughton (4417)

      Despite the fact that he dislikes Perl, I largely agree with this guy.

      Thanks for the reference to that excellent article, (Scalable computer programming languages) [caltech.edu] by "this guy" (Mike Vanier).

      Given that he dislikes Perl, I noticed a couple of glaring omissions:

      CPAN doesn't even "come close" to Jarballs?

      Java libraries are wonderful, but no mention of CPAN anywhere in the article.

      Julian Morrison sent me this email:

      There's a very important feature you missed, and it's the real explanati
  • Re:scripting large systems (Score:1)

    by btilly (5037)

    C is better for generating Heisenbugs. Which fact alone makes me strongly dislike it for large projects.
    
    Heisnbugs are trivial bugs that show up in one part of your code, will move around as you recompile for different platforms, change unrelated code, etc, will often disappear for an extended time, and then will pop up when you least expect it.
    
    The most common cause is a bad pointer, causing a fairly random point in memory to get overwritten. If that point has nothing particularly important, then everythin