use Perl

• Ignorance is bliss (Score:1)

  by marcel (3299)

  Maybe it's because people who use PHP probably don't realize that it sucks, and others are thankfully spared the experience, so they don't feel a need to complain publicly.
  
  Marcel
  
  • Re:Ignorance is bliss (Score:1)

    by brian_d_foy (44)

    We shouldn't discount or try to explain away what people think. My guess is that PHP doesn't suck for a lot of people, which is why a lot of people (relatively) do not say that it sucks.
    
    If we find out why, rather than treating the datum as an outlier, we can apply what we find to Perl.
    
    For instance, several different people have told me that the PHP core documentation is organized better and available in other languages.
    
    A lot of other people have also told me that the PHP documentation is more pragmatic,
    • Re:Domain specific language (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jjohn (22)

      Perhaps Perl needs better CGI specific documentation. Perl, being a general purpose language, has a broad range of problems it can be used for. PHP, baring the mutant server-side version, is a CGI-only language. It is a lot easier to write documentation for PHP that tells users how to process CGI args, maintain session state, read client environment variables than to do the same for Perl, for which there are a great many ways to do it (and more are invented everyday). There are reams of paper dedicated to P
      • Documentation proposal (Score:2)

        by jdavidb (1361)

        What happens when you type perldoc perlcgi? Nothing. My point exactly.

        Maybe someone should write a manpage-length introduction to programming CGI with Perl and Apache that could be included in the core distribution. It could show the "right" way to do things (taint, strict, and CGI.pm) without having to comprehensively cover all of the alternatives. It could show how to accomplish common tasks. It wouldn't have to follow the usual maxim of, "That's a CGI issue, not a Perl issue, so it doesn't belong

        --
        J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
        • Re:Documentation proposal (Score:1)

          by swiftone (478)

          "it could show the "right" way to do things (taint, strict, and CGI.pm) "

          Maybe, but there are a lot of arguments even at that level. Do you use CGI to write your HTML? I, and a lot of others, consider that a bad practice, mixing code with HTML. Others, including a number of very talented programmers, feel differently.

          So how do you document even a hello world cgi script? Do you teach them with CGI's commands, heredocs, outside files, or perhaps one of the many templating systems?

          Sure, it's jus
          • Re:Documentation proposal (Score:1)

            by knowmad (2542) on 2002.09.19 9:12 (#13042)

            The nms project at SourceForge is doing a good job of creating some quality examples of common CGI applications. Perhaps the perldocs should reference that collection of software.

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