If you have four developers who are handy with Perl, Java, C++ and SQL, surely they can achieve vastly more than four purely Java developers.
Not sure what you mean here. Four developers, one handy in Perl, another in Java, a third in C++, and the fourth with SQL? Or four developers handy in four languages? People good in multiple languages are harder to find, and cost more. It's not clear whether the company gets more bang for the buck that way. Furthermore, even if all your programmers can program in all languages, it's not clear at all it's good to actually write in different languages. And that's because of code reuse. You can't easily reuse your Perl module in your C++ program, or your Java class in your Perl program. That means, C++ libraries, Perl modules and Java classes will be developed providing the same functionality. You must have a pretty good argument to sell that to a manager (or to me - and I'm not a manager).
There's nothing you can do in Java you can't to in binary. That's not a good reason for doing everything in binary. Similiarly for choosing Java over Perl.
You don't understand the argument. It's not an argument to pick Java over Perl. It's an argument to not keep Perl.
As for speed - runtime or development time. I can't think of too many cases where a Java developer will spend less time than a Perl developer implementing the same functionality. It doesn't matter if it took 5 hours to run or 6 hours, if Perl took a week to write and Java took a month.
Of course it matters. If you're at the dentist, you want the drilling to be done over with quick, and you wouldn't appreciate if he says "it doesn't matter that the drilling takes an hour, does it? They assembled the drill in a week instead of a month!".
If raw speed is a criteria - do it in assembler/C.
Speed is almost always a criteria. It seldomly is the only criteria.
Why not have a coding bake off between their best Java programmer and their best Perl programmer. A set of 10 exercises to be implemented correctly in the shortest space of time. I bet the Perl guy would win. By days...
Well, they had a bake-off. And Java won. But a bake-off you suggest is pointless. You shouldn't pit the best programmers together - but the average, or even the worst programmers. Furthermore, development time isn't everything. Resource usage, speed, maintainability and reusability are vital as well. Besides, if you do 10 exercises, they will all be short programs, which will give Perl an edge. It doesn't measure the suitability for large projects though, which is likely to be more important.
hopefully others can provide links to the myriad of articles about how good Perl is.
Whether Perl is good or not wasn't the question. There are a myriad of articles to be found saying how good Java is - probably more articles saying so then you can find articles saying how good Perl is.
Perl is a PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE and an extremely powerful one at that - in fact one could quite easily argue that, featurewise, Perl is much more powerful than Java.
Shouting doesn't help. Since you say that it's easy to argue that Perl is more powerful than Java, could you give some objective arguments, without becoming emotional?
Abigail
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