I largely agree with you Erik, but over the last few years, as admins write more and more code, I have got used to the fact that baseline standards for languages vary from site to site. . Back in the day we *had* to use C, shell, and Perl, because there were no other options, but now we've gone from famine to feast, and there's too much choice. Whenever I'm asked to write code by any of my clients, I always ask "what language do you want me to write it in?" The worst answer is: "whatever you want". I much prefer to see a standard enforced, whatever that standard might be. Otherwise, everyone does it in "whatever they want", and no one understands anyone else's code. r At the site I'm on at the moment, Node,js is part of the standard toolchain. We have lots of internal code written in it, so all the ops team are comfortable using it. It's also used on our front-end, so we can better understand what our developers are doing. My last job was with a very big Chef house, so everything that was too much for a very simple shell scripts was done in Ruby, because everyone already knew it.
These days, I can probably count on one hand the number of ops/admins I know who are happy using C, and (decent) Perl knowledge is much thinner on the ground than it was. I doubt I've done anything serious in either of those for close on 15 years. I know critical pieces of Solaris are written in Python these days, but IMO they shouldn't be, and so far I've felt no pressing need to learn any more than the rudiments that language. Obviously the shell wouldn't be an appropriate language for handling HTTP requests, so I decided my best options for SexyMF were Ruby or Node. (I'd never dream of writing system software in Java, even if I understood the language well enough to do so. I picked Node for two main reasons: first, I've been working increasingly with SmartOS and Joyent products, and Node is most definitely part of the toolchain there. Second, I wanted to know more about the language, and there's nothing like doing a proper project to get your head round something. I didn't know that Node does run on SPARC until I was some way into the project. If I'd realized sooner, I might have gone with Ruby. But, it's been an enjoyable learning exercise, so no regrets. If you wish to rewrite it in C, be my guest! :-) Rob ------------------------------------------- illumos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
