1 post tagged “development”

I've recently had the opportunity to start thinking about a huge ground up project on the scale of 1Xmonths.  I think this is something that we all dream about. Having the freedom to do as we choose. Try out those ideas that we had that always got shot down by others for reasons good or bad. I found that before the I could start solving the problem, I had to decide what tools to use.

The scale of this project and the resources available dictate that more than one person will be working on it ( if not now, then in the future ) and they will most likely be pretty junior. And this is where the problem starts.

Perl.

Now I love Perl. I write Perl almost everyday even though I don't "code for a living" right now. I think Perl is creative, efficient, artistic and just plain fun. I'll also conjecture that well written perl is much faster than poorly written C since you can take advantage of the extra smart people who built the "guts of perl". Perl has a great community that generates reusable code to make your life easy ( usually ) too.  In short, Perl gud.

Unfortunately, just as with any other tool that is as powerful as Perl, it can be dangerous and a risk as well. In the hands of a novice, or just someone with bad coding practices, Perl can turn into a 9 headed hydra that thrives on kicking you in the nuts at 4am.

The new fangled languages like python and ruby. They have many nicities, but mostly they benefit from having good software design mechanics and good coding practices built into their very fiber. Python is fun, python is good and it makes you write clean code. However Python does not enjoy it when you try to do something that Python does not approve of. Python frowns on you for doing it "that" way.

Which brings me to my moral dilemma... go it alone and build my beautiful ivory tower of Perl or resort to python or *gasp* ruby and harness the power of the sloppy?