[OT] perl and CLRs

[Dirk Koopman]

Peter Hickman wrote:

> Well here's a problem then, imagine getting people to use Perl without 
> CPAN. I have a choice of programming languages to use but I use Perl 
> mostly because there is a good chance that somewhere on CPAN is a module 
> that will get me 99.9999% of the way there. Without it I might as well 
> be writing everything in tcl. Perl runs everywhere that .NET run and 
> more besides how would limiting the platforms that Perl can be run on an 
> cutting the number of modules available be justified?

Strangely, people do write stuff without using (much) on CPAN. Also the 
things that break would be stuff written in C, not the pure-perl code. 
Mono runs, or could be made to run (with advantage) on all the hardware 
that perl runs on. And it is a myth that the whole of CPAN runs on all 
the platforms that perl itself does.

> 
>> But it *is* the way the world is going and it does leverage work done 
>> elsewhere.
> If you are just interested in following the herd then become a J2EE 
> developer, oops that is another direction that the world seems to be 
> going in. Lets enumerate:
> 
> * cperl (as is)
> * Parrot
> * .NET
> * JVM
> 
> There are much more compelling reasons to get Perl on the JVM than on .NET
> 

Such as? Speed? Coverage?

>>
>> Do we *really* want to continue to hold our noses in the air?

> You are mistaking indifference with contempt. I couldn't give a toss 
> about .NET and I have no interest in what David Beckham is up to this 
> week either.

Precisely the sort of attitude that worries me. Perl is *soooooooo* much 
better than everything else (which may well be true) so that is all 
there is to said. That's all right then.

Problem is: we are leaking developers like a sieve, nothing like the 
number of new users are coming in the perl fold than formerly (and the 
number drops every year) and the perception that perl is a dead-end (or 
plain dead) grows out there in the hive mind, at the same or greater rate.

We all know that Web 2.0 is erm... er... well we know what it is, but 
having said that, where are the CPAN modules for the underlying useful 
stuff, eg the "rails" bits?

Dirk