----- Original Message ---- > From: Octavian Râsnita <orasn...@gmail.com> > To: modperl <modperl@perl.apache.org> > Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 5:26:43 PM > Subject: Re: decline and fall of modperl? > > From: "Joe Schaefer" > > The original message that started this thread was: > > > > """ > > > 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. > > """ > > > "Consultants" who don't contribute anything to this community aren't our > > concern- nor should they be. > > If they are consultants, it means that they contribute. The contribution is > not > only made of code and POD documentation or translations, but also of answers > to > the questions put by others.
You're not even in the ballpark. Consultants are hired and fired based on the quality and relevance of the information they provide. They're supposed to make recommendations based on what is in their client's best interests. That's not a contribution to this community nor any other, it is a *paid for* service. A contribution to a *community* would be to offer gratis advice on a mailing list, ostensibly to help the community reach its objectives. Nothing I see in this thread looks like a contribution to the mod_perl community, sorry. > > Of course this question should be answered with language comparisons, > > > Hardly. What matters is the quality of the software and whether or not > > it meets the customer's needs. There's nothing wrong with recommending > > the "right" tool for the job, even if the "right" tool isn't implemented > > in perl. > > The question wasn't about the quality of perl, but the poster wanted to know > if > Perl/Mason/mod_perl are obsolete. > A language could be very good but obsolete because there are other better > tools, > or because other tools are prefered even if they are not so good, and it > could > be easier to find programmers that use those new tools. > > > and of course that those answers should be based on our opinions and > experience, > > because if there would be very scientific studies that show which of the > > languages are modern and which are obsolete, which are good and which are > > bad, > > it could be very simple to find the sites with those scientific studies > > using > > Google and it wouldn't need to be asked on a mailing list. > > > > Here is a good article written by Ovid - "Perl 5 is dying": > > > > http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/38010?from=rss > > > > We should also remember that somebody discovered that perl 5 is dying 9 > > years > > ago, and this was the thing that created the idea of perl 6, that should be > > totally different. > > > Languages don't die, they aren't people. People will continue to use > > perl5 for the forseeable future, even after perl 6 is finally released. > > "Die" is just an expression that wants to tell that the language is not used > by > more and more programmers, but by fewer. Usage statistics are irrelevent to the vitality of a language. What's relevant to the perl community is something like how many module maintainers have abandoned their codebases. Do you have any information about how many modules are on CPAN that are no longer supported? And to bring it back to mod_perl, how many of those are Apache modules?
