Re^2: Company considers recoding Java app in Perl

[dws]

Let's not spread FUD here: Java is not slow.

I think it's more a misunderstanding than it is FUD. When technical people hear "fast" or "slow", we tend to think in terms of how efficiently a technology will perform. But when business people use those words, they tend to mean "how soon can I have it?"

Well-coded Java might outperform well-coded Perl in some cases, but Perl (or Python or Ruby) will often get you there a lot quicker, without spending time wrestling with language that wants to put you into a straightjacket for your own good. Sooner and slower usually beats later but faster.

[perrin]

In this case, I'm pretty sure the OP was referring to execution speed, not development speed.

[willyyam]

True, I was. I may well have used Java apps that were fast, but I didn't notice. I do notice waiting 15-45 seconds for a page to render in my browser. I'm not trying to spead FUD, and you're point is well made. I think that the issue for the company that is switching to Perl is memory footprint - which is only tangentially related to speed.

[perrin]

When you use mod_perl or FastCGI, Perl's memory footprint is also quite large. Perl has other advantages, but I don't think it's a clear winner over Java in terms of memory usage.