Someone needs to take jwz aside...

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 09:06:48AM +0100, Hakim Cassimally wrote:

> While Javascript-the-language is lovely (as you say, better in some
> respects, worse in others, than Perl), that's only one part of the
> story.  I've not followed Javascript-the-platform that closely (i.e.
> anything much beyond jQuery) - what's your experience been like,
> working with Node and other libraries?
> 
> Perl->Javascript is a really interesting migration path I'd not
> considered, and I'm not sure "it's faster!" would convince me on its
> own -- we all know there are faster languages than Perl.  But... JS
> does have a significant advantages over, say, Perl->Haskell, as
> Javascript is so widespread and therefore has many(devs, projects,
> jobs).

The huge problem I have with programming in Javascript is that, apart
from a few competing libraries for doing browsery stuff, which I'm not
really interested in, there's not much else.  Perl's strength isn't its
speed (there are faster languages for just about every task apart from
munging text, and little that I do these days has speed of text munging
as a priority) or the language itself (which is a bit of a dog's
breakfast) but is the CPAN.

It's the lack of a CPAN-a-like for any other language that keeps me
coming back to perl.

Of course, it's possible that the Comprehensive Python Archive Network
or similar for ruby/javascript/java/C/whatever does exist but I just
can't find it.  But then, if I can't find it, it's not much use.

-- 
David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age

  The test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use.  If it
  fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will
  make it any better, it will only make it more expensive and foolish.
     -- Frank Pick, lecture to the Design and Industries Assoc, 1916