From: Dick Davies <rasputnik@...>
Date: 2004-05-07T19:44:45+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT]Is Ruby Top 1 of Programming Languages that are Loved?

* Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com> [0509 18:09]:
> In article <20040506112301.GA20201@lb.tenfour>,
> >Funnily enough, I had an interview where I got asked some simple Perl
> >questions, which were easy enough to answer.
> >
> >Then I got a real beauty: 'So, what would you say is wrong with Perl?'
> >
> >20 minutes of rant later, the interviewer was asking about where he
> >could get Ruby.
> >
> >I start next week.

> Are they looking for more people who know Ruby?  Anyplace that is that 
> open to change sounds like a good place to work.  Sign me up!

That's the weird thing, it's not a ruby development job!
It's sysadmin looking after a java appserver, but they have to build their 
own tools to workaround shortcomings in java - which they seem to be doing
in perl (for now <g>).

But yeah, they sound like a good crowd (it's a University, I guess that 
helps).

Personally I've found that development jobs tend to require a particular
language, whereas sysadmin lets you use whatever will get the job done,
so long as it *does* gets the job done within the deadline.

Samba for example snuck to popularity because a few guys replaced their
shitty NT boxen with it and didn't bother telling the boss until he
asked why the servers weren't going down so often.

My current employer has  a particularly horrible php ordering system, 
truly the worst code I ever saw. When we finally met the developers I tried
to diplomatically ask some questions about performance, their respone was
'this would be so much easier in perl....'

Turns out one requirement  for the system was that it had to be written in 
PHP! Possibly 'Intrusive Management Quarterly' had run a piece on it to
give J2EE a break?

Now that's not to slag off PHP, but making experienced Perl coders resort
to Dummies guides, _against_ _a_ _deadline_, to cobble something together
is probably not a smart move.
You end up with the code equivalent of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins...

If it'd been me, I'd have written a perl version, 
registered the .php mimetype with a perl-handler and got on with my life.

-- 
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
		-- Abraham Lincoln
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns