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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • The war between PostgreSQL and MySQL continues to rage, which is disappointingly stupid--they should be trying to steal installations from Oracle, just as Perl and Python shouldn't be fighting with each other, they should be taking the battle to C++ and Java.

    The cause of the infighting is obvious. Everyone likes to think they've made the right choice, so everything else must automatically become the wrong choice. This is sad. Personally, I think Java is a fine language -- if you have the right problem

    • Personally, I think Java is a fine language -- if you have the right problem space. I once found myself in the position of recommending Java over Perl due to this, but have listened to people be absolutely astonished that I could even think such a thing.
      I say with no malice or sarcasm: I'd be fascinated to know what this problem space was.
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      You are what you think.

      • No worries, I realize your question was legitimate and while I'm answering at length, don't take that to mean I misunderstood your intent :)

        I won't go into detail about the particular project, but as a general guideline, I think it's fair to say that while Perl can tremendously increase the productivity of individual programmers, Java is still a safer language for many programmers.

        In Java, you have to go out of your way to forget to check whether or not your file access was successful. There's not real

        • Hm.

          I guess there's a certain divergence in philosophy to some degree. "We want it to be easy to produce powerful things" versus "We want it to be hard to really screw up too badly". (I suspect highly that it makes it sound like I'm not an advocate of the second view. Philosophically, I do disagree with it. I suppose it's like the difference between anarchy and "relative policing" -- if you've got only self-restriction, you have a theoretically high freedom to do good things, but there's always some schmuck mucking things up, and if they don't see a cop every now and again (or get picked up for misdemeanors) then they end up being a serious problem.)

          Having said all that, I'd like to be able to crank out Java. I just have this problem -- every time I look at Java, my laziness starts to kick in, and I start telling myself I can save time by not doing an example of X in Java.

          Of course, "saving time" is not always the best goal. (Me saying this is tantamount to heresy, as most people who know me well would quickly tell you.) There are times when saving time is wasting time, and it depends on my goal -- if I want to learn Java at all, fiddling around in Perl isn't saving time. If I want a functional screenscraper in a day, Perl is the time saving implied. (CGI being only one example, of course.)

          Regardless of my preference, though, I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't honestly examine a particular language's boundaries.
          Agreed -- that's why I asked for the information about the problem space. I want to know as many as I can as well as I can. And I hear lots of fine things about Java...I just want to find out why I can't seem to actually do them.

          Practice is the reason. Clearly, I need to get some.

          While we're here, let me ask you -- C++ versus Java, if you've had any exposure to that? Pros, cons, special circumstances?

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          You are what you think.
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