Re: Let's face it, Perl *is* a scripting language

[gcalexander]

Having used Perl for quite a while, it amazes me that people lose sight of the fact that a language is just a tool to get something done. No matter what tool you use to do the job, if its not used correctly the end result will always be sub-par.

As far as developer productivity and implementation flexibility goes, scripting languages such as Perl, will always provide a more efficient and productive way to get things done. The development of large and complex systems in Perl, or any language for that matter will only be successful if the supporting processes (coding standards, style guides, development methodolgy, etc) are enforced and followed. Software maintainability, for scripting/interpreted languages will always be an issue if this isn't the case.

While I might be biased towards Perl :-), I've used it to build extremely large and complex systems, and (I guess this is where Perl shines the most) for ad-hoc development, prototyping, sysadmin stuff.

Perl is not going anywhere, or dying anytime soon. The 'sloppy' use of Perl for large applications should have died 10 years ago, but hey, I guess that's the price you pay for flexibility. Not to mention the benefits of productivity, mountains of CPAN modules, and an extremely large and competent community.

As a side note, I also get a little upset when people complain about potential performance issues of Perl. In a commercial environment, developer productivity is a big selling point (especially to management). In practice (depending on the application of course :-), you'll find that most of the time, Perl is more than sufficient as far as performance goes. If you need some platform dependant functionality, or better performance, write that bit in C and get on with the important things :)