[Catalyst] RFC: The paradox of choice in web development

Matt Pitts mpitts at a3its.com
Thu Feb 19 19:51:44 GMT 2009


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Rodland [mailto:arodland at comcast.net]
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 1:12 PM
> To: The elegant MVC web framework
> Subject: Re: [Catalyst] RFC: The paradox of choice in web development
> 
> On Thursday 19 February 2009 09:12:36 am Matt Pitts wrote:
> > In today's world of software that is cross-platform and OS agnostic
> at
> > its core, Perl 5 is showing its age. Still love it though.
> >
> 
> This isn't as much a Perl problem as it seems to be -- it's the rule
> all
> around that writing code that works on _everything but Windows_ is ten
> times
> easier than writing code that works on everything including Windows.
> Perl is
> just in a unique place to show this. In C, which is hardly more than a
> portable(-ish) layer on top of assembler, and which has a small
> standard
> library, code isn't portable at all without significant work (and even
> still,
> Windows is usually the hardest target to hit.) In Java, portability is
> considered paramount, so OS facilities are exposed through thick
> compatibility layers or else not at all. Perl sits in the middle
> ground.
> Sufficiently "pure perl" code will run on a million and one platforms,
> but at
> the same time Perl was never afraid to expose OS facilities (like stat
> or
> SysV IPC) more or less directly, to allow more powerful code. This has
> made
> it easy to write code that, even though it doesn't use XS as all, is
> platform-specific enough to crash and burn on windows. But if it's a
> shortcoming in Perl, how do we fix it? By taking all the goodies away
> from
> the Unix folks so everyone has to write to the least common
> denominator?

I don't see it as a shortcoming and I can't imagine Perl without its
low-level goodies. I'm just saying that by not having a "common
denominator" Perl is a harder adoption as a "platform" in today's world
of cross-OS lifecycles.

Maybe perl6 will provide that "common denominator" without sacrificing
the low-level goodies.

v/r
-matt pitts



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