Re: Is Java really better than Perl???

[EvdB]

It is difficult to counter general arguments without ending up in a "Oh yes it is", "Oh no it isn't" type discussion.

It would seem that your company may be suffering from plain sailing boredom. This is where everything is ticking along nicely and so the managers get bored and decide that something needs to be changed. After all it is only big decisions that count, right?

Why not have a weighted vote? Give coders 4 votes, managers 2 votes and anyone else one vote. Ask something like "Should we exclusively use Java for all our development?". If you lose live with it or relocate.

Before having a vote have a whole company meeting and get the two sides to slog it out and answer questions from the floor.

Whilst you're at it get your company to consider "The only hot beverage should be coffee, tea is for old crusties".

[EvdB]

More specific answers:

1) To consolidate the total number of languages in use by the Competency, leading to more efficient use of staff

This is highly dubious, the tough part of coding is getting the algorithms right, the language is just the way to tell the computer what to do. How far should this be taken - arguably you should continue and specify particular frameworks, tools, IDEs etc. You'll end up with code by numbers.

2) Unsuitability of the language itself for large-scale development i.e poor IDE support, debugging support, GUI, Web work, etc - this was documented in the "Mid Range Language Strategy Document" last year.

ie - it ain't perty. This is often a problem that I find - people who do not code do not like non GUI interfaces for lots of reasons - mainly lack of hunt and click. That document might want a bit of critique. There will be some valid points but if your team can't work as a team then it is not a team.

3) There's nothing you can do in Perl that you can't do in Java. This position was cemented by the Perl-Java bake-off which demonstrated Java to be at least equivalent in speed to Perl and after much grunting this was accepted, except by some "old crusties", I suspect mainly for INERTIA reasons.

There's nothing you can do in Java that can't be done in perl... There is also an important distiction between execution speed and develepment speed. Also consider development time to lifetime ratio - very important.

4) In fact with the new design reviews, any Perl implementations will not get past that gate.

Hmmm, unable to comment.

Good luck fighting this.

[Abigail-II]

To consolidate the total number of languages in use by the Competency, leading to more efficient use of staff

This is highly dubious, the tough part of coding is getting the algorithms right, the language is just the way to tell the computer what to do.

While this is true, it's not an argument. If your company is programming in two languages, they need to hire skills for two languages - they have two options. Either hire two groups of people, one group is skilled in one language, the other is skilled in the other language. The drawback is that one group can't do the work of the other - unless you do some investment to train them. The other option is to hire people skilled in both languages. But those tend to be harder to find, and more expensive (and rightly so, because they are more able).

Note that I'm not saying that it's always good to focus on one language (or OS, or platform, or colour of shoes, or whatever). I'm just saying that there are arguments (many of them having to do with costs in some way) for homogeneity - but there are arguments for heterogeneity as well (flexibility, spreading for risks). It's not a black and white decision.

There's nothing you can do in Java that can't be done in perl.

I don't think that's the argument. The argument is that there's nothing you can do in Perl that you can't do in Java - so there's no reason to keep Perl.

There is also an important distiction between execution speed and develepment speed. Also consider development time to lifetime ratio - very important.

Important, but not overly. In many cases, execution speed is far more important than development speed. If you have a website that makes it money from sales, and investing 2 programmer years to shave off 5 seconds of the transaction time leads to 10% less customers to leave before concluding the deal, it may be well worth the investment.

Abigail

[EvdB]

I take your point on consolidating staff - although there is room to argue over a beer about whether a good coder is good because of general skills or specific language skills.

With There's nothing you can do in Java that can't be done in perl I wanted to make the point that it cuts both ways and so can't be used as an argument per se.

Again I accept your speed arguments, and without particulars of the situation it is difficult to get specific. I could argue that 2 programmer years is more expensive that faster hardware, but that is mud slinging and also applies equally to Java.

[DrHyde]

Why not have a weighted vote?

Because companies are not democracies.

incidentally, I've voted -- on a few posts in this 'ere thread, because they're whiney and irritating. Some monks need to grow up.