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Old-Fashioned Versus Newfangled Approaches To Perl
By Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2009-04-17
In many areas of life, there are distinct groups of people weighing tradition against innovation. Perl professionals sometimes split themselves along the same line, too, and one expert recently explored the relative merits of each side.
The "stability and predictability" faction, as defined by chromatic, might be compared to fans of old cars. Those tanks wouldn't crumple and deploy airbags in low-speed collisions, costing the owners thousands of dollars. On the other hand, they could be unsophisticated and handled like crap.
chromatic writes, "Many Perl-using system administrators fit into this camp. They have a lot of mottos, such as 'You can't break existing code!' and 'Slow and steady change is fine!' Upgrades should be infrequent and predictable. Some of these people have code they wrote a decade or more ago that runs, unchanged, on the most recent version of Perl."
As for the "improvement and abstraction" folks, chromatic continues, "The other school of thought believes that change is necessary to improve the language. . . . The goal of this group is to improve the language and its ecosystem based on feedback from real-world usage."
He winds up recommending something of a mixed approach, leaning towards the second methodology, which seems reasonable enough. Perhaps the success of all the new retro-themed cars like the Mini Cooper, Mustang, Challenger, and Camaro can even prove the value of this solution.
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.
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