Well, perhaps we should look at this not so much in the manner of logic, but perhaps scare tactics. For example, WPI recently went through its statistics on hack and hack attempts against the school servers (I know not really a corporate environment, but I'll get to my point). It turns out that over 90% of the hack/hack attempts on the school's servers were done through weaknesses in PHP. If that doesn't scare them, then remind them that the off-the-shelf installation of PHP gives su-root access to anyone who can write PHP; not terribly safe/smart. Not to mention a lot of people who write in PHP (not all) never studied actual programming and therefore do not follow good programming procedures. The list goes on, so I'll shut up about PHP now.
Well, you get my point. Start knocking them off one by one. Though C# is not as insecure and scary and PHP, it still has its bugs. > the main item I didn't like is that it is not type safe, there are only > three variables types About this, you should really ask him why this is a bad thing. I can think up my own reasons, but I'm wondering if thinking along the lines of "more is better". Which is NOT always the case. And, if all else fails. Remind everyone that Perl is simply cheaper to write in. You don't need any expensive editors or compilers. You rarely need to purchase any extra hardware. And it's a truly flexible language. Lastly (promise), see if you can dig up some articles explaining how perl has become much more of a Object Oriented Programming language. Frequently this makes it sound more impressive to those who don't already love the language. Good luck. HTH. --Alex > Here is an email I received internally regarding the shortlist of > languages for future software development. I must add that this is a > corporate environment. I responded saying that Perl has one of the richest > data structures that I know of. Strong typing is actually a bad thing as > far as I am concerned. How can I rebut this arguement in a better way? > Actually, there is a hidden agenda to standardize on C# here! > > "I took out Perl. After looking at www.perl.org and the language more, > the main item I didn't like is that it is not type safe, there are only > three variables types ( > http://perlpod.com/5.8.4/pod/perlintro.html#Perl%20variable%20types). > Yikes! Although ti has many of the characteristics we listed, it still > seems to be used for scripting than for more robust programming. > > I left in PHP, it is widely used. If we want to remove PHP, I have no > real argument, just that it's a viable language that has the > characteristics we listed. > > I added Cold Fusion as a web language. It is also a widely used web > language and has the characteristics we listed. I would prefer it more > than PHP." > > __________________________________________ > Ranga Nathan / CSG > Systems Programmer - Specialist; Technical Services; > BAX Global Inc. Irvine-California > Tel: 714-442-7591 Fax: 714-442-2840 > > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > Boston-pm@mail.pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
