Re: [MacPerl] MPPE Mailing list

["Paul J. Schinder" <schinder@pobox.com>]

At 11:27 PM -0400 7/13/99, Richard Gordon wrote:

>
>For good, bad, better, or worse, Perl is following the same course 
>that the internet followed and that Linux is following now- it's 
>future as an all-geek toy has a visible horizon that is approaching 
>rapidly. If the Big Dogs of the Perl community aren't inclined to 
>acknowledge the role of cgi in scripting, then Perl's present 
>pervasiveness in that arena will falter. There are some indications 
>that this is already happening- PHP (about which I don't know too 
>much) appears to have been built from the ground up for cgi in 
>general and for database integration in particular. A development 
>environment that doesn't recognize & exploit its potential strengths 
>is in a state of atrophy- FoxPro is all but dead now because the 
>mandarins at MS and the developer community never understood where 
>it fit into the internet altho it could have easily been made into a 
>heavy hitter server that would have put *anything* else on the 
>planet to shame.


Personally I doubt that *any* piece of software written by MS could 
dominate on its merits.  (Or did they buy it?)

But if people are using PHP, so what?  They should use the language 
most appropriate for the job, of course.  Why do people think that 
*everyone* is after "global domination", or that the "Big Dogs of the 
Perl Community" want to give you one and only one choice for doing 
CGI or anything else, or that they're completely focused on "market 
share"?  As a yapping little puppy of the Perl community, I'd 
certainly be happier if the endless, repeated, and yes, stupid, 
questions that could have been answered by five minutes of actual 
effort by the questioner (usually less time than it takes them to 
compose a message) went to PHP forums rather than the Perl forums 
that I read.

The reason I'm not interested in CGI is that I don't do CGI.  I have 
exactly one CGI.  I use Perl for many other purposes.  I *don't* use 
Perl for many purposes as well, because it's not particularly suited 
for, say, doing Fast Fourier Transforms.  I try to use a language 
appropriate to the job, and if that means learning a new language, I 
do it if the benefits outweigh the time spent.  I have PHP installed 
on the Linux side of this machine, and would learn it if I needed to.

>
>My main point is that even if the consensus is that messages that 
>don't pertain to MacPerl per se should be on an alternative list, 
>the present breakdown could use some consolidation.


So long as CGI remain on a separate list from this one.

>
>
>Richard Gordon
>--------------------
>Gordon Consulting & Design
>Database Design/Scripting Languages
>mailto:richard@richardgordon.net
>http://www.richardgordon.net
>770.971.6887 (voice)
>770.216.1829 (fax)
>


-----
Paul J. Schinder
schinder@pobox.com


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