From: Peter Hickman <peter@...>
Date: 2002-12-17T18:52:08+09:00
Subject: Re: help -- persuade my boss to adopt ruby

W. Kent Starr wrote:
>>Speaking of "features
>>needed for corporate use", we have to define what they are.  
> 
> 
> Extensibility, scalability, cost efficiency, value propagation,
> maintainability, security, productivity, accoutability, logevity.

Perl is used extensively for "corporate use" but there is nothing that I 
can do in Perl that cannot be done easier in Ruby (and much cleaner I 
must add). Ruby is a superiour language to Perl in all ways.

So why do we use Perl? CPAN!

Is CPAN a feature of the language? No

CPAN is a feature of the community, if befunge had its own CPAN library 
then befunge would be be used more in corporate settings. There is 
nothing about Perl that a multitude of languages can't do and can't do 
better (I rather like SNOBOL and ICON).

The phrase "features needed for corporate use" is weasel marketing speak 
and the phrase "value propagation" only confirms it (and what on earth 
is "accoutability" as a language featue). Just examine your list of 
"features needed for corporate use" against the following languages and 
see how many fall short on many criteria..

C/C++ Java COBOL FORTRAN LISP PASCAL BASIC Perl Python Tcl Forth

Then explain why they are used.