Amazon

I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to
drop mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also
head is likely to be Java ).

They have a HUGE deployment on mp, and have been my prime "Um, not
enterprise? Hello, AMAZON." repsonse.

I know that people 'in the know' can't comment on record... however
I'm wondering if anyone with second-hand intel has heard , and can
share :

a- what the bottleneck / scaling issues were
b- were these due to apache/mod_perl, or because of the framework
implementation... and this is just an opportunity to switch
technologies while they switch frameworks ( ie, is MP to blame, or
Template Toolkit... and MP is taking a fall since its going to be a
PITA to ditch TT )
c- what the hell the financial projections were on doing this. are
they looking to save on hardware scaling, developer scaling, is the
codebase just unmanageable? this would be a costly transition




// Jonathan Vanasco

w. http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco
e. jonathan@findmeon.com

| Founder/CEO - FindMeOn, Inc.
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
| FindMeOn.com - The cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
| Privacy Minded Web Identity Management and 3D Social Networking
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Re: Amazon

Doesn't sound right to me that they would jettison the existing
deployment unless it was really dysfunctional, which doesn't seem to be
the case...I'm curious what the real story is.

d

Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to drop
> mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also head is
> likely to be Java ).
>
> They have a HUGE deployment on mp, and have been my prime "Um, not
> enterprise? Hello, AMAZON." repsonse.
>
> I know that people 'in the know' can't comment on record... however
> I'm wondering if anyone with second-hand intel has heard , and can
> share :
>
> a- what the bottleneck / scaling issues were
> b- were these due to apache/mod_perl, or because of the framework
> implementation... and this is just an opportunity to switch
> technologies while they switch frameworks ( ie, is MP to blame, or
> Template Toolkit... and MP is taking a fall since its going to be a
> PITA to ditch TT )
> c- what the hell the financial projections were on doing this.
> are they looking to save on hardware scaling, developer scaling, is
> the codebase just unmanageable? this would be a costly transition
>
>
>
>
> // Jonathan Vanasco
>
> w. http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco
> e. jonathan@findmeon.com
>
> | Founder/CEO - FindMeOn, Inc.
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> | FindMeOn.com - The cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
> | Privacy Minded Web Identity Management and 3D Social Networking
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>
>

Re: Amazon

Can be anything really, though I admit I'm not in the know. Sometimes
it's simply a business decision: perhaps moving development off-shore to
companies that are full of Java/ .NET people? Can't find enough
competent mp developers?

Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to drop
> mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also head is
> likely to be Java ).
>
> They have a HUGE deployment on mp, and have been my prime "Um, not
> enterprise? Hello, AMAZON." repsonse.
>
> I know that people 'in the know' can't comment on record... however
> I'm wondering if anyone with second-hand intel has heard , and can
> share :
>
> a- what the bottleneck / scaling issues were
> b- were these due to apache/mod_perl, or because of the framework
> implementation... and this is just an opportunity to switch
> technologies while they switch frameworks ( ie, is MP to blame, or
> Template Toolkit... and MP is taking a fall since its going to be a
> PITA to ditch TT )
> c- what the hell the financial projections were on doing this.
> are they looking to save on hardware scaling, developer scaling, is
> the codebase just unmanageable? this would be a costly transition
>
>
>
>
> // Jonathan Vanasco
>
> w. http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco
> e. jonathan@findmeon.com
>
> | Founder/CEO - FindMeOn, Inc.
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> | FindMeOn.com - The cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
> | Privacy Minded Web Identity Management and 3D Social Networking
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>

Re: Amazon

On 23.02.2008 02:59 Jonathan Vanasco wrote:

> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to
> drop mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also
> head is likely to be Java ).
>
> They have a HUGE deployment on mp, and have been my prime "Um, not
> enterprise? Hello, AMAZON." repsonse.

In a recent issue of the German iX magazine there was a report about a
similar migration (www.mobile.de I think).
There the reasons were, if I remember correctly:
- scaling issues. The underlying design was such that not every
component of the site was easily scalable.
- some of the original developers left, so it was difficult to
maintain the original codebase
- JAVA community with lots of help and high quality tools and libraries.
- the new solution used less resources (they saved a few hundred
servers) and still ran faster.

For me this article showed some important points
- often Perl projects start as quick and dirty solutions that end in
a maintainability nightmare. Of course it is possible to write
code in Perl that meets the best standards, but often Perl is used
when this is not the main focus but when instant results are needed.
- Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly and
they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is 'PHP'
in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the money
is.
- Even the great CPAN repository doesn't seem to match what is
available for JAVA. I could see this myself when I needed to write
a Webservice client against a JAVA server with SOAP-Lite or when
I tried to connect to a CORBA based application.

Just my 0.02 Euro
-Michael

> I know that people 'in the know' can't comment on record... however
> I'm wondering if anyone with second-hand intel has heard , and can
> share :
>
> a- what the bottleneck / scaling issues were
> b- were these due to apache/mod_perl, or because of the framework
> implementation... and this is just an opportunity to switch
> technologies while they switch frameworks ( ie, is MP to blame, or
> Template Toolkit... and MP is taking a fall since its going to be a
> PITA to ditch TT )
> c- what the hell the financial projections were on doing this. are
> they looking to save on hardware scaling, developer scaling, is the
> codebase just unmanageable? this would be a costly transition
>
>
>
>
> // Jonathan Vanasco
>
> w. http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco
> e. jonathan@findmeon.com
>
> | Founder/CEO - FindMeOn, Inc.
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> | FindMeOn.com - The cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
> | Privacy Minded Web Identity Management and 3D Social Networking
> | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>

Re: Amazon

Hi there,

I normally don't borge into a thread like this since I am not an active user of mod_perl.

But have you noticed how cheap memory is these days? You can set up a dual 64 bit processers server with 4Gig bytes of memory and set up 10 VM on the same machine. It is extremely fast and efficient, and much easy to manage.

All these VM virtualization technology is driving the cost of ownership down tremendously. And then each application runs faster because each has its own VM and a fix partition of memory. Why make software scalable while you can scale using cheap hardware and virtualization? Then you can deploy simply and primitive systems built by outsourced global development centers on these new hardware platforms.

The playground may be changing very rapidly for developing scalable software. I also used `curl -I` to look at what webserver amazon is running on. It's neither IIS nor Apache because the response didn't provide any specific server ID.

They may be tomcat. Can someone tell what system components are they using? Oh well.

- Clement

-----Original Message-----
>From: Jonathan Vanasco
>Sent: Feb 22, 2008 5:59 PM
>To: modperl
>Subject: Amazon
>
>I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to
>drop mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also
>head is likely to be Java ).
>
>They have a HUGE deployment on mp, and have been my prime "Um, not
>enterprise? Hello, AMAZON." repsonse.
>
>I know that people 'in the know' can't comment on record... however
>I'm wondering if anyone with second-hand intel has heard , and can
>share :
>
> a- what the bottleneck / scaling issues were
> b- were these due to apache/mod_perl, or because of the framework
>implementation... and this is just an opportunity to switch
>technologies while they switch frameworks ( ie, is MP to blame, or
>Template Toolkit... and MP is taking a fall since its going to be a
>PITA to ditch TT )
> c- what the hell the financial projections were on doing this. are
>they looking to save on hardware scaling, developer scaling, is the
>codebase just unmanageable? this would be a costly transition
>
>
>
>
>// Jonathan Vanasco
>
>w. http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco
>e. jonathan@findmeon.com
>
>| Founder/CEO - FindMeOn, Inc.
>| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>| FindMeOn.com - The cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
>| Privacy Minded Web Identity Management and 3D Social Networking
>| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>

Re: Amazon

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, Foo JH wrote:

> Can be anything really, though I admit I'm not in the know. Sometimes
> it's simply a business decision: perhaps moving development off-shore to
> companies that are full of Java/ .NET people? Can't find enough
> competent mp developers?

It is certainly hard to find good mp developers.

However, mod_perl has always been for the tech people; unless in a
technocracy, java would always be the choice for the class of
management.

Choosing java for better performance would certainly be a joke. If a
java solution fails, it would be an industry-standard failure, backside
covered. :-)

Cheers,


Jie

Re: Amazon

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, c chan wrote:

> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:21:34 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
> From: c chan
> To: Jonathan Vanasco ,
> modperl
> Subject: Re: Amazon
>
> Hi there,
>
> I normally don't borge into a thread like this since I am not an active user of mod_perl.
>
> But have you noticed how cheap memory is these days? You can set up a dual 64 bit processers server with 4Gig bytes of memory and set up 10 VM on the same machine. It is extremely fast and efficient, and much easy to manage.
>
> All these VM virtualization technology is driving the cost of ownership down tremendously. And then each application runs faster because each has its own VM and a fix partition of memory. Why make software scalable while you can scale using cheap hardware and virtualization? Then you can deploy simply and primitive systems built by outsourced global development centers on these new hardware platforms.

I don't really want to start an argument that is off-topic anyway, but with all the overhead
and quirks of virtualisation, performance is actually weird (a new way of describing performance).

Regards,


Jie

Re: Amazon

Jie Gao wrote:
>
> and quirks of virtualisation, performance is actually weird (a new way of describing performance).
>

I tend to achieve an average 0.6 wierds, although in the summer it can
reach 0.72 wierds.

John

Re: Amazon

Hi,

One of the first things I would look is their job postings...if they are
switching, that would be one sign. Indeed, I saw a few software
development jobs on amazon asking for Java and C/C++ experience. Only
found one asking for any two of Java, C/C++, and Perl. Of course, this
is just a hint...they may be hiring people to maintain their payroll
database, etc.

But you might want to watch their jobs DB to see if there is any trend
they're moving toward...

Ray


Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to drop
> mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also head is
> likely to be Java ).

Re: Amazon

On 23 Feb 2008, at 07:25, Jie Gao wrote:
> Choosing java for better performance would certainly be a joke.


Java isn't slow you know :)

Memory usage, well, that depends. But it's not slow.

--
Andy Armstrong, Hexten

Re: Amazon

I think what Jie meant was "choosing java *just* for performance would
certainly be a joke"

On 2/23/08, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> On 23 Feb 2008, at 07:25, Jie Gao wrote:
> > Choosing java for better performance would certainly be a joke.
>
>
> Java isn't slow you know :)
>
> Memory usage, well, that depends. But it's not slow.
>
> --
> Andy Armstrong, Hexten
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Amazon

On 23 Feb 2008, at 11:29, deepfryed@gmail.com wrote:

> I think what Jie meant was "choosing java *just* for performance would
> certainly be a joke"


Ah. Sorry.

--
Andy Armstrong, Hexten

Re: Amazon

Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to drop
> mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also head is
> likely to be Java ).

I always thought amazon was a good argument for perl but not mod_perl -
last time I looked they were using mason + fastcgi (not mod_perl)

--Geoff

Re: Amazon

hi,

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:

> In a recent issue of the German iX magazine there was a report about a
> similar migration (www.mobile.de I think).

I would like to comment on that article. I think it is very important to
read this article less as a "Everyone should migrate to Java, here's
why" and more as a "We've been migrating, here's how and what problems
we solved".

The reason I'm saying this is because the article keeps quiet about some
details. I'm not saying the article is wrong or bad, but from a perl
programmer's point of view there are some important details left out.

> - some of the original developers left, so it was difficult to
> maintain the original codebase

This is true. But there were two main reasons why Perl programmers left
- The company moved from the city to somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
It's normal that you lose employees if you do this.
- The company had sponsored perl workshops and had sent people to
workshops and conferences before. That stopped long before the switsch
to Java. It's no surprise that it gets at least more difficult to find
perl programmers if you stop supporting the community.

> - JAVA community with lots of help and high quality tools and libraries.
> - the new solution used less resources (they saved a few hundred
> servers) and still ran faster.

Also with that part the article leaves something important out. Part of
the solution that saved lots of servers was the new search component.
This is written in C++ (I'm telling no secrets here, although this
wasn't mentioned in the article), and the first part of the changes was
in fact letting the perl code communicate with the new search engine.
Already this was a success and saved lots of hardware.

While I would certainly say that the new code design and software
architecture is much better than the old one (naturally, if you
redesign something historically grown up), I'd also say this could have
happened with Perl, too. For many features which were actually needed
there was no time. But if you do a rewrite you have time for everything.

I felt the need to say that after reading the article. Again, the
article itself is written well for its purpose, but if you (or your
boss) search for reasons to switch to Java you should search for
something more detailed.

> A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is 'PHP'
> in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the money
> is.

Well, talking about PHP, I would be careful as a company to
say there are more PHP developers, and they are even cheaper, so we
switch. There *are* professional PHP programmers and it is possible to
write good code, but the fact that there are many PHP programmers is in
my opinion due to the fact that it's easy to write a simple website with
it and almost every webhoster supports it. So I would estimate to get
PHP programmers with the same quality you have to search as long as for
perl programmers, if you care about security.
So I still hope that at least some companies prefer quality to quantity.

regards,
tina

--
http://darkdance.net/
http://perlpunks.de/

Re: Amazon

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On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 06:25:42PM +1100, Jie Gao wrote:
>=20
> Choosing java for better performance would certainly be a joke. If a
> java solution fails, it would be an industry-standard failure, backside
> covered. :-)
>=20
Just a variation on the old, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."

Regards,

-Roberto

--=20
Roberto C. S=E1nchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com

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Re: Amazon

modperl is fast, but it consumes too much memory.
so we choose fastcgi written by C++.

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 10:49 PM, Roberto C. S=E1nchez
wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 06:25:42PM +1100, Jie Gao wrote:
> >
> > Choosing java for better performance would certainly be a joke. If a
> > java solution fails, it would be an industry-standard failure, backsid=
e
> > covered. :-)
> >
> Just a variation on the old, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."
>

Re: Amazon

offtopic:

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, J. Peng wrote:

> modperl is fast, but it consumes too much memory.
> so we choose fastcgi written by C++.

actually it consumes less memory than FastCGI if you do it right. If you
load as many modules and data structures as you can at startup time,
Apache will share the memory between the processes (as long as you don't
change the data).
With FastCGI this is not possible (or so I was told), so you usually end
up with using more memory.

regards,
tina

--
http://darkdance.net/
http://perlpunks.de/

Re: Amazon

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> I've heard from a few reputable sources that Amazon is looking to
> drop mod_perl, and push into another technology ( which I've also
> head is likely to be Java ).

Amazon uses Mason with FastCGI. They have never used mod_perl. They
also use nearly everything (C++, Java, etc.) somewhere in their
system. The Perl stuff is just used on the front-end.

They have a quirky setup. For one thing, they use Safe, which makes
it hard to use all the normal CPAN modules. I'd be surprised if they
moved off Perl though. It would be a major investment for them to
rewrite.

- Perrin

Re: Amazon

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Tina Müller wrot=
e:
> On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, J. Peng wrote:
>
> > modperl is fast, but it consumes too much memory.
> > so we choose fastcgi written by C++.
>
> actually it consumes less memory than FastCGI if you do it right. If you
> load as many modules and data structures as you can at startup time,
> Apache will share the memory between the processes (as long as you don't
> change the data).
> With FastCGI this is not possible (or so I was told), so you usually end
> up with using more memory.

The process model is pretty similar (pre-fork), so it should be about
the same. The important part of that sentence though was "C++", which
would have a smaller footprint than Perl if it was done well. It's a
tradeoff for developer time of course...

- Perrin

Re: Amazon

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 11:08 PM, Tina Müller wrot=
e:
> offtopic:
>
>
> On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, J. Peng wrote:
>
> > modperl is fast, but it consumes too much memory.
> > so we choose fastcgi written by C++.
>
> actually it consumes less memory than FastCGI if you do it right. If you
> load as many modules and data structures as you can at startup time,
> Apache will share the memory between the processes (as long as you don't
> change the data).

Apache with prefork mode can share the memory? Sorry I didn't know it.
Sharing memory between multi-processes need extra programming, I don't
know apache has done it already.

Re: Amazon

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, J. Peng wrote:

> > On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, J. Peng wrote:
> >
> > > modperl is fast, but it consumes too much memory.
> > > so we choose fastcgi written by C++.
> >
> > actually it consumes less memory than FastCGI if you do it right. If you
> > load as many modules and data structures as you can at startup time,
> > Apache will share the memory between the processes (as long as you don't
> > change the data).
>
> Apache with prefork mode can share the memory? Sorry I didn't know it.
> Sharing memory between multi-processes need extra programming, I don't
> know apache has done it already.

well, it's not "shared memory", it's just the simple forking model which
doesn't copy memory, for example module code or big configuration data.
only if you change some of the data the process copies the memory page.

--
http://darkdance.net/
http://perlpunks.de/

Re: Amazon

J. Peng wrote:
>
> Apache with prefork mode can share the memory? Sorry I didn't know it.
> Sharing memory between multi-processes need extra programming, I don't
> know apache has done it already.

Both prefork and worker models share memory. fork() takes all of your
pages and marks them "copy on write". This means; no-touchie, share nice.
Don't confuse this with shared, writeable pages.

Once you do write to any byte of a common page (even assigning the same
value and not actually anything), the kernel makes you up your own private
copy. Do that in every fork()ed child, and it hurts. This is why the
process and conf pools of httpd should never be touched by a sane module
from the child_init hook, onwards.

But you won't notice the sharing as much with worker model, since there
might be only 10 processes sharing memory to support 250 children, instead
of 250 children all sharing that same config. Although worker starts out
25 times more compact, so the net win from fork()+threading is roughly
equivalent ;-)

Re: Amazon

On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
> - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly and
> they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
> A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is 'PHP'
> in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the money
> is.

Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
reprint. Hardly a surprise.

If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number of
jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
healthy.

A.


--
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting

Re: Amazon

I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly and
> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is 'PHP'
> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the money
> > is.
>
> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>
> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number of
> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
> healthy.
>
> A.
>
>
> --
> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>

Re: Amazon

I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can tell,
beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually indistinguishable
- except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
with Python.

I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend to
come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where the
rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and really
don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.

Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
days. And none of them is Java - thank God!

Also, remember that being a typed language does not make object-oriented
design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try that
argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.
You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.

d

J. Peng wrote:
> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena wrote:
>
>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly and
>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is 'PHP'
>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the money
>> > is.
>>
>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>
>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number of
>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>> healthy.
>>
>> A.
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>
>>
>
>

Re: Amazon

If I may contribute a modest opinion : this whole thread started, I
believe, because someone wrote that Amazon may move away from perl and
may go in the direction of Java.
How many of us, honestly, will some day have to create or run a website
that sees even 10% of the traffic and load of the current Amazon site ?
And to the practical knowledge of this regular Amazon customer, their
site is working pretty well today, isn't it ? What I mean is that
Amazon might very well have taken a decision to move to other tools in
the future, but it does not look as if they did it because their current
one isn't working. And we also don't know if their future website will
work better.
In my humble opinion thus, if today Amazon is (still) using perl, to me
that is recommendation enough. I will happily and humbly follow in
their tracks, and hope that my website some day reaches the level of the
current Amazon website, and that I might have to think about
investigating something else. I would consider that quite an achievement.

André

RE: Amazon

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Agree with this sentence "Any developer with a solid object-oriented =
background in ANY of these
languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
days.".....and I think any smart person with good common sense would =
understand OO in no time...

________________________________

From: David Scott [mailto:ds94103@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:06 AM
To: modperl@perl.apache.org
Subject: Re: Amazon



I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can tell,
beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually indistinguishable
- except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
with Python.

I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend to
come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where the
rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and really
don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.

Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
days. And none of them is Java - thank God!

Also, remember that being a typed language does not make object-oriented
design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try that
argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.=20
You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.

d

J. Peng wrote:
> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena =
wrote:
> =20
>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly =
and
>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is =
'PHP'
>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where =
the money
>> > is.
>>
>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>
>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number =
of
>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>> healthy.
>>
>> A.
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk =20
>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>
>> =20
>
> =20




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Re: Amazon

sory to intrude but this just caught my eye, that statement is contrary to
the evidence, lots of "smart" people did not , have not made the paradigm
shift to OO, they say they do but many code in OO languages in very non OO
ways. It was not mentioned but moving over from one OO language to another
is not that easy walk in the part type of thing. Going from Smalltalk to
Java for example, is not fun due to immense productivity differences
between the two i.e Smalltalk being dynamic and having constructs that
just make it so much easier to work with. I have played with Ruby, it
borrowed a lot of its collection functionality from Smalltalk and seems to
have full block closures but yet no where close as far as productivity.

anyhow, again I apologize for the intrusion, I realize that Smalltalk does
not play in your world there. Although ironically, it does play well in a
web world. Check out Seaside, a Smalltalk web framework which is getting a
lot of play.

-Charles

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:18 -0500, Ronald Dai. wrote:

> Agree with this sentence "Any developer with a solid object-oriented
> background in ANY of these
> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
> days.".....and I think any smart person with good common sense would
> understand OO in no time...
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: David Scott [mailto:ds94103@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:06 AM
> To: modperl@perl.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Amazon
>
>
>
> I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
> when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
> around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can tell,
> beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually indistinguishable
> - except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
> with Python.
>
> I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend to
> come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where the
> rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and really
> don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
> Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
> writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.
>
> Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
> days. And none of them is Java - thank God!
>
> Also, remember that being a typed language does not make object-oriented
> design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
> there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
> infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try that
> argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.
> You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.
>
> d
>
> J. Peng wrote:
>> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
>> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
>> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
>> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly and
>>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is
>>> 'PHP'
>>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where the
>>> money
>>> > is.
>>>
>>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
>>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>>
>>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
>>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number of
>>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>>> healthy.
>>>
>>> A.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
>>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>



--
Charles A. Monteiro
http://wiki.nycsmalltalk.org
http://www.monteirosfusion.com
http://monteirofusion.blogspot.com

Re: Amazon

You're no doubt right, my ANY referred to the Perl/Python/PHP/Ruby
family, not Java and Smalltalk. I hadn't had my coffee yet, hope I
wasn't too incoherent...

d

Charles A. Monteiro wrote:
> sory to intrude but this just caught my eye, that statement is
> contrary to the evidence, lots of "smart" people did not , have not
> made the paradigm shift to OO, they say they do but many code in OO
> languages in very non OO ways. It was not mentioned but moving over
> from one OO language to another is not that easy walk in the part type
> of thing. Going from Smalltalk to Java for example, is not fun due to
> immense productivity differences between the two i.e Smalltalk being
> dynamic and having constructs that just make it so much easier to work
> with. I have played with Ruby, it borrowed a lot of its collection
> functionality from Smalltalk and seems to have full block closures but
> yet no where close as far as productivity.
>
> anyhow, again I apologize for the intrusion, I realize that Smalltalk
> does not play in your world there. Although ironically, it does play
> well in a web world. Check out Seaside, a Smalltalk web framework
> which is getting a lot of play.
>
> -Charles
>
> On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:18 -0500, Ronald Dai.
> wrote:
>
>> Agree with this sentence "Any developer with a solid object-oriented
>> background in ANY of these
>> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
>> days.".....and I think any smart person with good common sense
>> would understand OO in no time...
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: David Scott [mailto:ds94103@earthlink.net]
>> Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:06 AM
>> To: modperl@perl.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: Amazon
>>
>>
>>
>> I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
>> when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
>> around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can tell,
>> beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually indistinguishable
>> - except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
>> with Python.
>>
>> I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend to
>> come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where the
>> rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and really
>> don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
>> Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
>> writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.
>>
>> Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
>> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
>> days. And none of them is Java - thank God!
>>
>> Also, remember that being a typed language does not make object-oriented
>> design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
>> there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
>> infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try that
>> argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.
>> You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.
>>
>> d
>>
>> J. Peng wrote:
>>> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
>>> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
>>> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
>>> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>>>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly
>>>> and
>>>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>>>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it
>>>> is 'PHP'
>>>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where
>>>> the money
>>>> > is.
>>>>
>>>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
>>>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>>>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>>>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>>>
>>>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
>>>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the
>>>> number of
>>>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>>>> healthy.
>>>>
>>>> A.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
>>>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

RE: Amazon

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Well....personally I am perl+java...started with C/C++ about 20 years =
ago though (fortran before that)...don't feel problem with =
dotnet.....so I won't say too much then....

________________________________

From: Charles A. Monteiro [mailto:charles@datasof.com]
Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 11:05 AM
To: Ronald Dai.; David Scott; modperl@perl.apache.org
Subject: Re: Amazon



sory to intrude but this just caught my eye, that statement is contrary =
to=20
the evidence, lots of "smart" people did not , have not made the =
paradigm=20
shift to OO, they say they do but many code in OO languages in very non =
OO=20
ways. It was not mentioned but moving over from one OO language to =
another=20
is not that easy walk in the part type of thing. Going from Smalltalk to =

Java for example, is not fun due to immense productivity differences=20
between the two i.e Smalltalk being dynamic and having constructs that=20
just make it so much easier to work with. I have played with Ruby, it=20
borrowed a lot of its collection functionality from Smalltalk and seems =
to=20
have full block closures but yet no where close as far as productivity.

anyhow, again I apologize for the intrusion, I realize that Smalltalk =
does=20
not play in your world there. Although ironically, it does play well in =
a=20
web world. Check out Seaside, a Smalltalk web framework which is getting =
a=20
lot of play.

-Charles

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:18 -0500, Ronald Dai. =
wrote:

> Agree with this sentence "Any developer with a solid object-oriented=20
> background in ANY of these
> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
> days.".....and I think any smart person with good common sense would =

> understand OO in no time...
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: David Scott [mailto:ds94103@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:06 AM
> To: modperl@perl.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Amazon
>
>
>
> I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
> when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
> around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can =
tell,
> beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually =
indistinguishable
> - except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
> with Python.
>
> I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend =
to
> come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where =
the
> rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and =
really
> don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
> Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
> writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.
>
> Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
> days. And none of them is Java - thank God!
>
> Also, remember that being a typed language does not make =
object-oriented
> design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
> there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
> infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try =
that
> argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.
> You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.
>
> d
>
> J. Peng wrote:
>> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
>> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
>> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
>> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena=20
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly =
and
>>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is =

>>> 'PHP'
>>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where =
the=20
>>> money
>>> > is.
>>>
>>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales =
are
>>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>>
>>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the =
number
>>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number =
of
>>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>>> healthy.
>>>
>>> A.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk =

>>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>



--
Charles A. Monteiro
http://wiki.nycsmalltalk.org =20
http://www.monteirosfusion.com =20
http://monteirofusion.blogspot.com =




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Re: Amazon

did not get your Java yet :), alright too corny could not resist :)

from an outsider's perspective it seems to me that the
Perl/Python/PHP/Ruby , have had such great success in the web space
including great reusability that I can't fathom why somebody rational
would consider Java as a replacement , but I don't want to quibble ,
personally stay at least "dynamic" would be my 2 cents

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:07:48 -0500, David Scott
wrote:

> You're no doubt right, my ANY referred to the Perl/Python/PHP/Ruby
> family, not Java and Smalltalk. I hadn't had my coffee yet, hope I
> wasn't too incoherent...
>
> d
>
> Charles A. Monteiro wrote:
>> sory to intrude but this just caught my eye, that statement is contrary
>> to the evidence, lots of "smart" people did not , have not made the
>> paradigm shift to OO, they say they do but many code in OO languages in
>> very non OO ways. It was not mentioned but moving over from one OO
>> language to another is not that easy walk in the part type of thing.
>> Going from Smalltalk to Java for example, is not fun due to immense
>> productivity differences between the two i.e Smalltalk being dynamic
>> and having constructs that just make it so much easier to work with. I
>> have played with Ruby, it borrowed a lot of its collection
>> functionality from Smalltalk and seems to have full block closures but
>> yet no where close as far as productivity.
>>
>> anyhow, again I apologize for the intrusion, I realize that Smalltalk
>> does not play in your world there. Although ironically, it does play
>> well in a web world. Check out Seaside, a Smalltalk web framework which
>> is getting a lot of play.
>>
>> -Charles
>>
>> On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:18 -0500, Ronald Dai.
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Agree with this sentence "Any developer with a solid object-oriented
>>> background in ANY of these
>>> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
>>> days.".....and I think any smart person with good common sense would
>>> understand OO in no time...
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> From: David Scott [mailto:ds94103@earthlink.net]
>>> Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:06 AM
>>> To: modperl@perl.apache.org
>>> Subject: Re: Amazon
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute phobia
>>> when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn right
>>> around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as I can
>>> tell,
>>> beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually indistinguishable
>>> - except that Perl has been around longer and runs a lot deeper. Same
>>> with Python.
>>>
>>> I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people tend to
>>> come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable working where the
>>> rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come from web dev, and really
>>> don't see the need to go too far beyond dynamic web pages. Ruby and
>>> Python people tend to be Java refugees. But the skill set involved in
>>> writing good code is no different, regardless of your background.
>>>
>>> Any developer with a solid object-oriented background in ANY of these
>>> languages can move comfortably into ANY of the others within a few
>>> days. And none of them is Java - thank God!
>>>
>>> Also, remember that being a typed language does not make
>>> object-oriented
>>> design patterns any easier. If you read the original "Gang of 4" book
>>> there is no mention of Java or Ruby - in 1995 both were in their
>>> infancy! But they do talk about Smalltalk, which is untyped. Try that
>>> argument the next time you hit one of these "perl is evil" majordomos.
>>> You won't get the job, of course, but it will brighten up your day.
>>>
>>> d
>>>
>>> J. Peng wrote:
>>>> I like Perl than others. once a company wanted to hire me and gave me
>>>> much higher salary than the current job. But one of their conditions
>>>> is not permit to use perl, but use python instead. I'm familiar with
>>>> python too, but I hate that clause. So I gave up that job finally.:)
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Aaron Trevena
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 23/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
>>>>> > - Perl usage is declining. I read some statistics from O'Reilly
>>>>> and
>>>>> > they showed that Perl book sales are going down.
>>>>> > A few years ago the 'P' in LAMP clearly was 'Perl', now it is
>>>>> 'PHP'
>>>>> > in most cases. Developers tend to go (even if slowly) where
>>>>> the money
>>>>> > is.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, you're making wild claims there - yes ORA perl book sales are
>>>>> down, but then that really doesn't indicate much - most of the ORA
>>>>> perl books have been around for ages and are on their 3rd or 4th
>>>>> reprint. Hardly a surprise.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you look at other more useful numbers you can see that the number
>>>>> of contributors to CPAN and perl projects in increasing, the number
>>>>> of
>>>>> jobs is steady or increasing, and that actually it's all rather
>>>>> healthy.
>>>>>
>>>>> A.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
>>>>> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>



--
Charles A. Monteiro
http://wiki.nycsmalltalk.org
http://www.monteirosfusion.com
http://monteirofusion.blogspot.com

Re: Amazon

On 26.02.2008 16:01 André Warnier wrote:

> If I may contribute a modest opinion : this whole thread started, I
> believe, because someone wrote that Amazon may move away from perl and
> may go in the direction of Java.
> How many of us, honestly, will some day have to create or run a website
> that sees even 10% of the traffic and load of the current Amazon site ?
> And to the practical knowledge of this regular Amazon customer, their
> site is working pretty well today, isn't it ? What I mean is that

Of course you are right, Perl is totally up to the task, that's why we
are here, aren't we? ;-)
The other posters are also right, there is lots of community, lots of
CPAN and still enough books...

....but
Perl is no longer the "duct tape of the internet", there are these
stories about sites moving from Perl to JAVA but none about moving in
the opposite direction, there is all this fuzz about Ruby on Rails and a
boss who wants me to learn JAVA.
So, I don't want to do Perl-bashing, of course not, it is the language I
feel most at home with but I see that nowadays you really have to fight
to be allowed to write the next bigger project in Perl. There is this
"You are still using Perl?" all around that makes me feel a bit uneasy.

--Michael

Re: Amazon

On 26/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
> Of course you are right, Perl is totally up to the task, that's why we
> are here, aren't we? ;-)
> The other posters are also right, there is lots of community, lots of
> CPAN and still enough books...
>
> ...but
> Perl is no longer the "duct tape of the internet", there are these
> stories about sites moving from Perl to JAVA but none about moving in
> the opposite direction, there is all this fuzz about Ruby on Rails and a
> boss who wants me to learn JAVA.

There are stories about moving from Perl to Java, but to be honest,
I've never seen an example of this actually happening succesfully. In
my experience, management talk about moving to whatever is on magazine
covers but any decent project manager or IT Director would run away
screaming if asked to actually do it.

> So, I don't want to do Perl-bashing, of course not, it is the language I
> feel most at home with but I see that nowadays you really have to fight
> to be allowed to write the next bigger project in Perl. There is this
> "You are still using Perl?" all around that makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Not been my experience.

--
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting

Re: Amazon

coding from perl to python is easy,at least it's easy for me.
but,as many guys have said to me, from python to perl is not easy.
perl's many features,like the rich built-in variables and context,are
not so easy to be accetable by newbies.

//joy

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 12:50 AM, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> On 26/02/2008, Michael Lackhoff wrote:
> > Of course you are right, Perl is totally up to the task, that's why we
> > are here, aren't we? ;-)
> > The other posters are also right, there is lots of community, lots of
> > CPAN and still enough books...
> >
> > ...but
> > Perl is no longer the "duct tape of the internet", there are these
> > stories about sites moving from Perl to JAVA but none about moving in
> > the opposite direction, there is all this fuzz about Ruby on Rails and a
> > boss who wants me to learn JAVA.
>
> There are stories about moving from Perl to Java, but to be honest,
> I've never seen an example of this actually happening succesfully. In
> my experience, management talk about moving to whatever is on magazine
> covers but any decent project manager or IT Director would run away
> screaming if asked to actually do it.
>
>
> > So, I don't want to do Perl-bashing, of course not, it is the language I
> > feel most at home with but I see that nowadays you really have to fight
> > to be allowed to write the next bigger project in Perl. There is this
> > "You are still using Perl?" all around that makes me feel a bit uneasy.
>
> Not been my experience.
>
> --
>
>
> http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
> LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
>

Re: Amazon

On Feb 26, 2008, at 8:29 PM, J. Peng wrote:

> coding from perl to python is easy,at least it's easy for me.
> but,as many guys have said to me, from python to perl is not easy.
> perl's many features,like the rich built-in variables and context,are
> not so easy to be accetable by newbies.

I think the big issue in going from python->perl is losing the
formatting and whitespace. i went from perl->python -- which was
dead simple -- and occasionally bring in python friends to help with
perl stuff. the only things they groan about are differences with
the idiomatic ways to accomplish tasks, and using curly brackets

On Feb 26, 2008, at 9:06 AM, David Scott wrote:
> I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute
> phobia when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn
> right around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as
> I can tell, beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually
> indistinguishable - except that Perl has been around longer and
> runs a lot deeper. Same with Python.

Perl is known as messy. Ruby is known as clean. I'd say ruby is
messier than Perl, but has had 1000x more marketing materials pushed
its way because of Rails.
I've seen too many CEOs and CTO/Tech-Directors make decisions based
on this:
how many more people are talking about ruby than perl?
i see a lot more ruby jobs right now.
ruby is getting a big rise in usage, perl has plateaued
there are big web conferences, and fancy web 2.0 sites done in ruby
Anyone on this list could give very eloquent reasons as to why that
line of reasoning is flawed, and show each argument as being incorrect.
The point is that people are making decisions based on questions like
that.

> I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people
> tend to come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable
> working where the rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come
> from web dev, and really don't see the need to go too far beyond
> dynamic web pages. Ruby and Python people tend to be Java refugees.
I'd disagree with that a bit.
PHP and Ruby both have their root in 'web dev', but their core
audience is more like this:
they did java in web 1.0 because it was the next big thing with all
the jobs
they moved to php, because it was the new big thing that people were
hiring for
they moved again to ruby, because it was the new big thing that
people are hiring for

i see SO many resumes that show 'java->php->ruby' -- and friends who
run companies have seen the same.
whenever we see that, we pretty much toss the resume -- those people
aren't engineers or thinkers, they're basically code monkeys who are
trading on the current in-demand language.

Also, most people I see in python come from all over - lots of Perl
and Java , some php, and a lot of C - they're looking more or less to
do rapid prototyping of apps they either want to scale one day, or
will re-write in c.
I see this group less as refugees, as they often maintain their other
languages. Probably 60% of the python devs I know will often write C-
libraries to handle issues or are starting to offload onto Erlang.

> But the skill set involved in writing good code is no different,
> regardless of your background.
That is 100% true. A good person can shift languages in a
heartbeat. The languages all have their strengths and weaknesses,
but are mostly just syntax and approach differences.
The good engineers know how to solve problems, with fundamentals and
creativity - not a languag.

Re: Amazon

On this portion of your email:
> > But the skill set involved in writing good code is no different,
> > regardless of your background.
> That is 100% true. A good person can shift languages in a
> heartbeat. The languages all have their strengths and weaknesses,
> but are mostly just syntax and approach differences.
> The good engineers know how to solve problems, with fundamentals and
> creativity - not a languag.
>
Yes. Syntactically it is somewhat easy to move from language to language. I
think though that the real power of productivity is in the use and
availability of libraries available for a given language. The CPAN archive
is tremendous, and has given me so much power using perl and mod-perl, that
I have pretty much built a career on it. I hope and don't plan to ever
give it up because some manager reads the buzz in the publications. Ruby is
somewhat enticing because of the buzz, but love your point about program
language "hoppers". I might try a new language, do some of the basic stuff,
but then just say, can do it in perl - better, quicker, easier. Basically,
the languages are just tools to express oneself. But if perl can do most
everything I need, better to keep up with the web2.0 stuff, and not just
work on another reinvented wheel of a programming language. Of course, I
have been using perl for 15+ years, so it has become a trusted friend.

Yes, the real value is in the creative power of the designer/programmer,
and not just remembering syntax.






Jonathan Vanasco wrote on 02/29/2008 11:17:14 AM:

>
> On Feb 26, 2008, at 8:29 PM, J. Peng wrote:
>
> > coding from perl to python is easy,at least it's easy for me.
> > but,as many guys have said to me, from python to perl is not easy.
> > perl's many features,like the rich built-in variables and context,are
> > not so easy to be accetable by newbies.
>
> I think the big issue in going from python->perl is losing the
> formatting and whitespace. i went from perl->python -- which was
> dead simple -- and occasionally bring in python friends to help with
> perl stuff. the only things they groan about are differences with
> the idiomatic ways to accomplish tasks, and using curly brackets
>
> On Feb 26, 2008, at 9:06 AM, David Scott wrote:
> > I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute
> > phobia when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn
> > right around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as
> > I can tell, beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually
> > indistinguishable - except that Perl has been around longer and
> > runs a lot deeper. Same with Python.
>
> Perl is known as messy. Ruby is known as clean. I'd say ruby is
> messier than Perl, but has had 1000x more marketing materials pushed
> its way because of Rails.
> I've seen too many CEOs and CTO/Tech-Directors make decisions based
> on this:
> how many more people are talking about ruby than perl?
> i see a lot more ruby jobs right now.
> ruby is getting a big rise in usage, perl has plateaued
> there are big web conferences, and fancy web 2.0 sites done in ruby
> Anyone on this list could give very eloquent reasons as to why that
> line of reasoning is flawed, and show each argument as being incorrect.
> The point is that people are making decisions based on questions like
> that.
>
> > I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people
> > tend to come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable
> > working where the rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come
> > from web dev, and really don't see the need to go too far beyond
> > dynamic web pages. Ruby and Python people tend to be Java refugees.
> I'd disagree with that a bit.
> PHP and Ruby both have their root in 'web dev', but their core
> audience is more like this:
> they did java in web 1.0 because it was the next big thing with all
> the jobs
> they moved to php, because it was the new big thing that people were
> hiring for
> they moved again to ruby, because it was the new big thing that
> people are hiring for
>
> i see SO many resumes that show 'java->php->ruby' -- and friends who
> run companies have seen the same.
> whenever we see that, we pretty much toss the resume -- those people
> aren't engineers or thinkers, they're basically code monkeys who are
> trading on the current in-demand language.
>
> Also, most people I see in python come from all over - lots of Perl
> and Java , some php, and a lot of C - they're looking more or less to
> do rapid prototyping of apps they either want to scale one day, or
> will re-write in c.
> I see this group less as refugees, as they often maintain their other
> languages. Probably 60% of the python devs I know will often write C-
> libraries to handle issues or are starting to offload onto Erlang.
>
> > But the skill set involved in writing good code is no different,
> > regardless of your background.
> That is 100% true. A good person can shift languages in a
> heartbeat. The languages all have their strengths and weaknesses,
> but are mostly just syntax and approach differences.
> The good engineers know how to solve problems, with fundamentals and
> creativity - not a languag.
>
>
>

Re: Amazon

Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
>
> i see a lot more ruby jobs right now.
> ruby is getting a big rise in usage, perl has plateaued

http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/02/12/comparative-language-job -trend-graphs/

'It turns out that approximately 14% of “ruby” jobs relate to
restaurants - mostly the Ruby Tuesday chain.'

Re: Amazon

On 29/02/2008, Fred Moyer wrote:
> Jonathan Vanasco wrote:
> >
> > i see a lot more ruby jobs right now.
> > ruby is getting a big rise in usage, perl has plateaued
>
>
> http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/02/12/comparative-language-job -trend-graphs/
>
> 'It turns out that approximately 14% of "ruby" jobs relate to
> restaurants - mostly the Ruby Tuesday chain.'

I've seen ruby jobs plateau in the UK already - python jobs plateaued
a year or two ago, combined they fail to make up even 25% of perl jobs
available.

A.

--
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting