use Perl

• Why should I use it?" (Score:1)

  by Adrian (66)

  Note that the question is not "Why is Perl better than PHP", but rather "Why should I use it?"

  Off the top of my head:

  1. Perl is used in places that PHP isn't. You'll find Perl applications everywhere from unix system administration to car parking. Learning Perl gives you the opportunity to work in more places doing different things.
  2. In many cases somebody else has written most of your application for you. CPAN is a stupidly useful resource.
  3. All languages make some things easier and some things harder.
  • Devil's Advocate (Score:2)

    by ziggy (25)

    (Attempting to channel a recalcitrant, skeptical PHP programmer....)

    Perl is used in places that PHP isn't. You'll find Perl applications everywhere from unix system administration to car parking. Learning Perl gives you the opportunity to work in more places doing different things.

    That's fine, but why should I care? I'm never going to use a Sequent, port my application to AIX 4 or DYNIX. It's nice that sysadmins can use Perl, but if I don't care about writing sysadmin scripts, what's the point?
    • Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)

      by petdance (2468) <andy@petdance.com> on 2005.10.20 11:51 (#44047) Homepage Journal

      Yes, exactly. These questions are the ones that we need to anticipate in writing this. We need to explain the tangible benefits, not the soft fuzzy ones.

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      xoa

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