At 05:14 PM 10/25/2001, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > The key to publishing an API is having multiple vendors
> > actually implement it. So while I agree that an open API-based
> > approached to complex tasks such as Enterprise technologies
> > is a good idea, I just don't know how many 'vendors' will
> > actually take the time & money to implement it
>
>I was at the city on java conference in London a couple of weeks ago
>and one of the alleged "strengths" of Java was the fact that multiple
>vendors were competing to produce better JVMs.
JVM speed is a huge issue for Java where many modules tend to be written in
"100% Pure Java". Even though JNI is fairly easy to make Java link to C
code, there is no automated MakeMaker way of making Java libraries that
integrate well and easily with C code across many platforms.
So more likely than not you will see even performance critical modules like
encryption and XML implemented in 100% pure Java because making them have
to link to C code would be problematic in terms of ease of distribution.
One of the strengths of Perl is that on UNIX, at least, CPAN modules that
require C code are almost trivial to get working on the major platforms.
And on Win32, ActiveState has many of them precompiled in PPM.
So I am not sure an optimized PVM is really necessary at this stage to
advocate Perl for enterprises, although I think it's an interesting idea.
>Aside from Activestate, is anyone selling a "better perl"? Hell, I
>could do with an Athlon optimised perl for my co-lo machine (some tens
>of percent faster, maybe),
>
>I won't comment on the other strengths they alleged, like "smarter
>programmers" ;-)
I think I have stated on the mod_perl list that this is true to some
degree. Or rather, it's not that the programmers are necessarily smarter,
but certainly it's a lot easier to find experience in multi-tier
development when you advertise for Java programmers versus Perl
programming. It seems when advertising for Perl programmers, only 20% will
have ever programmed an object in Perl, of that 20%, 20% will have coded
with mod_perl and of that 20%, 20% of those will have coded in a
multi-tier MVC environment.
Whereas in Java, OO is a given. There is much literature and training for
OO in Java. Servlets is the defacto standard -- there is no CGI to fall
back on (equivalent to mod_perl), and RMI and similar tools makes
multi-tier development so ridiculously easy (there are even IDEs to make it
happen via a Wizard!) that it's difficult to find a Java programmer who has
not practiced multi-tier development in some capacity.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons for this list of course... To raise
awareness for Perl developers who want to do enterprise developer, or
multi-tier or what have you...
Later,
Gunther
