Re: web programming

On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 09:17:43AM -0400, Adam Lang wrote:
> As far as perl goes, I know some web develoeprs for a consulting firm that
> use Solaris and they are pretty tight in the industry. Their advice to me
> was that if I already don't know Perl, don't learn it. They said to take
> the Java route. They also were fond of PHP. In a nutshell, they said Java
> will phase out most large perl implementations (new clients tend to be
> developed in java, old code is redone, etc.)

The place I worked at over the summer did something similar. They have a
large existing infrastructure written in Perl/CGI + Apache, with the odd
thing using a Postgres backend. This was all running on a big Sun E450
(obviously running Solaris). When I started working, they had been
moving things over to Java Servlets - using JServ. They were also
getting much better hardware.

However, the Servlets seemed really unstable. JServ would die for no
apparent reason. It seemed like a lot of the staff felt that perhaps
moving to Java was a mistake. Whether their problems were the fault
of JServ, Java, or incompetent programmers/admins, I don't know.
(BTW, Postgres was rock stable. We never had any problems with it).
So I really haven't had enough experience with Java Servlets, since
Perl is more than sufficient and I know it works well.

I personally do my web programming in mod_perl, usually with DBI and
Apache::DBI. I love Perl, and I've had very few problems. I agree
with someone who mentioned mod_perl is tough to get into - it takes
a while to get up to speed.

As for PHP being embedded into HTML, the same thing is possible with
Perl - but you also get TMTOWTDI. The following all embed Perl in
HTML, to some degree:

HTML::Template
HTML::Embperl
HTML::Mason (as someone mentioned)
ePerl

And probably a few others I haven't heard of. You're free to pick and
choose whichever suites you best.

I'd recommend Perl, but it's really just a matter of personal taste.

Have fun,

Neil

--
Neil Conway <neilconway(at)home(dot)com>
Get my GnuPG key from: http://klamath.dyndns.org/mykey.asc
Encrypted mail welcomed

Hard work never hurt anyone - but why take chances?