[Gllug] Perl / PHP

[Dave Cridland]

On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 21:38, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 06:02:09PM +0100, tet wrote:
> > 
> > >Another minus is that the user community has a very low average level
> > >of cluefulness, since PHP is a popular language amongst those with no
> > >coding experience or training.
> > 
> > Actually, I'd say that applies to both the perl and PHP communities,
> 
> The Perl community has a problem of elitism, not the reverse.

No, the Perl community comprises of both idiots (I've seen their code,
and lived, at least to a degree) and elitists. And perfectly sane
people, who manage to write perfectly good Perl and don't begrudge
anyone else from learning how.

PHP was designed with a much lower entry-level in mind, and a very
different class of programmers entering, too. It's worked very well,
partly because the clever designers can use it in little bits, whereas
the more traditional programmers just stick the entire file between
<?php and ?>, and have done with it.

Criticising a language because it's been taken up successfully by
novices doesn't make much sense to me. Doesn't that make it good?

Personally, I use both, usually for different things. Perl for server
side stuff, complex scripts, and glue scripts. PHP for web stuff. When
I've got something big which requires maintenance, I tend to avoid Perl,
since I find that I can't come back to it later as easily as with PHP or
C++.

That last sentence brings us vaguely back onto topic, so it must be time
to query why Kristian mistakenly used the words "mysql" and "database"
in the same sentence without mentioning "isn't a proper" in between.

Dave.


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