[SunRescue] Anyone else here hate Perl?

[Steve Pacenka]

Dave McGuire and I wrote:

> > an outstanding example of code reuse.  I find Perl to be extremely efficient 
> > in lines of code terms, taking many fewer lines for the kinds of programs I 
> > write in it (file processing, number crunching) than any other language I 
> 
>   Fewer lines, sure...but how about machine cycles?  Bytes of memory?

What about programmer time, versus the cost of CPU clock and memory?  
Obviously it depends on the application.  And the economics are shifting, when 
you can get hundreds of megahertz and hundreds of megabytes of RAM for a 
couple of thousand dollars (all via overnight mail) but you can't find enough 
qualified programmers at the salaries your organization will pay (I'm in 
higher ed, and we underpay computer people severely).

Code destined to run a zillion times or to crunch gigabytes will merit the 
extra programmer time to write in C or assembler, or having the programmer 
invest in learning an application-specific language like SQL.

I do have one current application that will outgrow Perl - it has to process 
about 30,000 non-text files each 100k, wrong-endian for the architecture.  
Perl was excellent for prototyping but we will process this set enough times 
that a version in C will probably be done.

-- SP