Re: Perl Network Programming: A Dying Craft?

[crazyinsomniac]

Marketability?

Depends on who you're talking to.
While I agree with Jeffas points, I do think that in the general business market, perl is still gonna be regarded as hackerish (and it is), while Java, which is geared towards business, will be regarded as more cost-effective with shorter development time and less proneness for serious bugs (and it is).

Now don't get me wrong, learning true socket is something every programmer should do, and perl is a good language to learn it in, but as for marketability in the business world, seems kinda insignificant (at least for the majority of the busines market).

Why, because one of the reasons Java was made was for real-business type network applications, and perl simply wasn't.

I'm talking about enterprise-wide network application, Remote Method Invocation and stuff like that.

While I am talking out my a$% most of the time, in general, Java applications are easier to maintain, develop, and debug, particularly because of the 'abstraction' Jeffa mentiones, which while not being particularly exciting, and limiting, provides a sense of safety from real bugs.

Java also makes scalability, granularity, and distribution easier.

A lot of programmers like to get away from the dirty details, and business people like their programmers to concentrate on the important details, like adding numbers, and not reimplementing already stable components.

One of the reasons people are moving away from perl for quicky network applications is because they don't want them to be just quicky applications, and java makes making that distinction easy.

>Will it significantly enhance one's marketability to know it?
Once again it's up to who you're talking with. If you're talking to a fellow programmer (a real programmer ;), he'll be relieved you know how sockets really work.

But some kind of manager, business non-programmer person type, will once again go for the buzz words, and he won't be particularly interested that you know some arcane technical details.

So, in conclusion, learning Perl Network Programming is a dying 'craft', but one which will get you respect from real programmers, and a few laughs from the business ones.

However, while it may seem a dying craft, people still program in COBOL, but them jobs are few and far between (not true for perl quite yet, but the tide is turning).

It can't really hurt to know important details, even if it might appear that way.

And don't forget, some c/c++ programmer had to write Java, and the many Java Native Interface extensions, as Java can't handle everything (whereas perl pretty much can, network programming wise at least, and easier than c/c++).

---

I would like to remind you of my little disclaimer, so do take some of this with a grain of salt, as it is an extremist view coming from an extreme (and biased) programmer with limited experience (after all, aren't all/most human beings such creatures?-).

update:
Once sun released the spec, they lost their hold on the compiler market. I introduce to you jikes, a faster compiler with a better error reporting scheme, which is certified Open Source ;-)

update:
Opinions and experiences vary for many reasons, who's to say what's vaild?
Please note that I have not stopped *learning* perl.

 
___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

[sierrathedog04]

A brutally candid reply. Okay, I am sticking with Perl because I like the community, but I should not expect that it will keep me profitably employed on other people's projects.

And just because I am programming Perl for a living now doesn't mean these jobs will always be around.

So if I need to learn network programming, and we all need to learn it, then I can learn it using Perl if I like. However, I will probably need to learn Java also to really apply network programming skills for corporate and government clients.

On the other hand maybe Perl will surprise us all, and Java will slip. One thing I believe is that Perl is truly open source, and Java is not. And no one knows what is going to happen, and whether Sun's fairly tight control of Java compilers will backfire on it.

[mugwumpjism]

While I agree with Jeffas points, I do think that in the general business market, perl is still gonna be regarded as hackerish (and it is), while Java, which is geared towards business, will be regarded as more cost-effective with shorter development time and less proneness for serious bugs (and it is).

I think you mistyped old school as general, and marketed as geared.

I'm not sure how Java could be regarded less prone to serious bugs; surely that is up to the skill of the programmer. About the only reason that Java might win is on the strength of type checking.

[shotgunefx]

I think you give RMI and it's ilk too much credit. I know of a few big (millions plus use them) portal RMI apps and for the most part are very slow and fragile. (SOAP anybody?) Not saying that Java is worthless by any means but I think you give it too much credit. The write once run anywhere promise is still a bit of a tease.

I think the flexibility and shear momentum of the Perl community will keep Perl gaining ground. I don't think utilizing Perl for network programming is a dying craft at all. Then again, that's just my opinion.

-Lee

"Then again WDIK. ™"