Re^2: Perl/CGI Vs PHP Vs ASP

[weierophinney]

As someone who uses both PHP and perl on a daily basis, I feel the need to point out some bad assumptions here.

First, your reasons for avoiding PHP are based on some flawed assumptions. Regarding (1) you can separate HTML from PHP just as you may with perl. While Rasmus does claim PHP is a templating language, there are plenty of PHP developers using template engines (look at the popularity of Smarty in the PHP world if you have any doubts). (2) PHP5 introduced E_STRICT, which operates very similarly to perl's 'use strict'. Additionally, you can set error reporting to either be completely off, show all errors and warnings, or a number of grades in between. Basically, you can get PHP to complain about exactly the same sorts of things perl complains about when warnings and strict are used. (3) can also be considered a benefit; there's little need to add external libraries as they're already compiled into the language. And regarding (4), PHP has not been limited to the web for quite some time; the CLI SAPI has been compiled into PHP by default since version 4.3.0, and was available in the entire 4.x series. While the CLI doesn't have the popularity of the web SAPIs, it is available, and many PHP programmers utilize it (myself included).

Your reasons for choosing perl have everything to do with yourself and your personal preferences, and little to do with the language. One can be either a careful or slipshod programmer in perl -- as in any other language. CPAN and the Monastery are probably the best reasons for choosing perl over another language -- but PHP has PEAR, user comments to the online manual, and a variety of lively mailing lists, making even those considerations somewhat moot. Basically, you should choose the language that suits the problem at hand, and, if possible, that others to whom you have direct access use (i.e., if your co-workers use a language and are proficient in it, you should probably try to utilize that language as you'll have mentors and people who can help debug and maintain your code).