[ale] Servlets Vs. Perl

[Fletch]

>>>>> "John" == John Wells <jb at sourceillustrated.com> writes:

    Mike> 3) I find the object oriented nature of Java to better lend
    Mike> itself to code organization and code reuse, so I end up
    Mike> being more efficient.
    >>  Get Damian Conway's _Object Oriented Perl_.

    John> Not to start a holy war here, but perl has some of the
    John> ugliest OO syntax I've seen.  Java OOP results in cleaner
    John> code, for the most part.  Perl OOP always feels like it's
    John> held together with a bunch of scotch tape.

        Too late, someone else already has . . . :)  At any rate,
that's why you should get the Conway book.  Perl's OOP is just as
capable as Java's, and in many ways more flexible.  Plus the dynamic
nature of Perl makes lots of common tasks trivial (for example there's
the Class::MethodMaker module which (amoung other things) will write
all of your accessors for your members for you). 


    John> In addition, freedom is not always a good thing.  Common
    John> practice in perl is to mix oo and non-oo code together,
    John> resulting in a confusing mix of methodologies.  Java forces
    John> your hand...


        But conversely, if you're using Java you're stuck with OOP
even if it doesn't fit the problem.  See the comparison of `Hello,
world' snippets in the Schwern paper from my first response in the
thread. 


    John> Of course, efforts can be made to keep the perl code
    John> maintainable and consistent, but in my experience this is
    John> rarely done.

        It's possible to write spaghetti code in any language.  And
perl also suffers from lots of code being written by non- or poor
programmers.  Larry's always mentioning that he wants to keep the
language accessable for those that write `baby Perl', while keeping it
possible for those who want to write well structured programs to do so
as well.


-- 
Fletch                | "If you find my answers frightening,       __`'/|
fletch at phydeaux.org   |  Vincent, you should cease askin'          \ o.O'
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