Re: From Perl to Java

[Perlbotics]

Some random, thoughts... It is a good thing to know (yet) another programming language. Perl has strengths, Java has strengths. That gives one the opportunity to chose the language that is better suited for the job at hand (another tool in the box). I would not try to map Perl2Java (analogue: see perlsyn '...a C programmer might...'). Each language has its own idioms. You can profit from learning Java the Java-way (OO etc.). Agreed, usually Java means somewhat more typing compared to Perl (in other words: more time spend until the coding bliss kicks in ;-), but on the other hand that is often compensated by frameworks (e.g. Tomcat for servlets, JUnit for testing, etc.) and faster execution speed. The online Java documentation is quite good and extensive. Besides buying a book, this is an opportunity to ask your boss for a training or even a Java certification (set of trainings).

[Jenda]

Any proofs regarding the execution speed difference? I bet there was a lot of improvement over the years in the Java world from the notoriously insanely unusably fat and slow language of late 90s, but there is very little reason for Java to ever be quicker than Perl.

[moritz]

but there is very little reason for Java to ever bee quicker than Perl.

I guess with JIT compilation and smart optimizers you can get very good speed improvements, inline method calls and stuff like that. Since perl 5 has not JIT, many possible optimizations can't be made.

But I don't know which is actually faster in what cases. Maybe the Debian language shootout has some answers, but at the moment I'm too tired to interpret the results ;-)