On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Louis-David Mitterrand <vindex+lists-modp...@apartia.org> wrote: > One of our customers is doing a detailed review of a mason/modperl ERP > app we've built for them since 2001. Prodded by some buzzword-compliant > consultants they are expressing concerns that the app's underlying > technologies - perl, modperl and mason - are becoming obsolete. They > feel that a web application framework must have 'rails' or some other > buzzword in its name.
I believe that the right developers can make good sites with Rails, but Ruby is a risky choice compared to Perl. It has a much smaller base of developers and hasn't been used for any large websites except the notoriously unreliable twitter.com. > But their main argument is that perl is declining as a web developement > language. Also they rightly feel that competent perl developers are > becoming harder to find. http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/03/08/perl-myths/ > What arguements could I use to address these concerns and convince them > that their initial investement in perl is still safe and won't be > obsolete in 10 years? Probably none if they've already made up their minds, as it sounds like they have. You might find out why they don't write it themselves if they know so much about the future of software development tools. > The client's local developers (who maintain the app we've built) feel > that mason gives too much freedom to write messy code and badly > structure a web app. It gives a lot of freedom, and if you have reckless developers and/or no development standards, you will end up with bad code. > So my second question is, what perl web development framework should we > recommend to our client? If you want to use Mason, you might mention to them that Amazon.com uses it for all of their pages and they don't seem to have gone under yet. But really, this is a marketing decision. Using another framework won't prevent people from writing bad code. Only good dev practices can do that. - Perrin
