Help me to be more biased towards Perl (or not)

[Ian Docherty]

I am biased, I accept that, but do I have good reason to be biased 
towards Perl rather than dot-net or Java?

I can't say I have done anything serious in either Java or dot-net, I 
just can't get the enthusiasm to get past the learning curve.

The reason I ask this is as follows.

The company I work for has a quite complex web application written in 
PHP and MySql. It is everything you would expect from in-experienced, 
but enthusiastic, programmers. Everything is in the same file, PHP, 
HTML, Javascript, SQL, cut-and-paste is rife, the only consession to 
re-usabality is a single file called functions.php where everything 
'shared' goes. I am sure you have seen this before.

I am trying to bring them out of the dark ages and have started up a 
project to use Perl and Catalyst to replace their existing application. 
Due to operational reasons this has stalled and we are looking to 
out-source the development.

My fear is that if the project is out-sourced I may be over-ruled by our 
directors who are impressed by flashy presentations from these external 
companies that have good reasons to develop this web application in 
either Java or dot-net (because that is what *they* are biased towards).

Once the project is done I still have to think about supporting the 
resulting code-base.

So, should I be concerned? Are there good arguments either for or 
against Perl? I know most people here will be biased towards Perl but 
are there any objective arguments I can use?

Regards
Ian Docherty