perl & cgi

[Kosher Kid]

i've been away from web stuff for a while an am just coming back...am not seeing anything that deals with perl and/or cgi.are these still useful? have php and like fully supplanted?what's the buzz, cuz?

[Little Goat]

I think a lot of people use that still, but it's not as popular as the other languages.LG

[scott100]

I think these languages are still useful but more modern languages like php asp etc have taken there place

[Kosher Kid]

thx

[aspnetguy]

PERL and CGI are still widely used but mostly by 'old school' programmers or developers maintaining legacy applications.They still work great but there is a speed issue.PHP and ASP are about 5 times faster than CGI and ASP.Net and JSP(compiled) is even faster still. So it is not that the language isn't useful it just has been outperformed by newer languages.

[raimo]

I'm using only Perl, not PHP at all .. don't like syntax of PHP, but Perl is beautiful and cool.

[scott100]

What's wrong with php syntax? I find it very similar to JavaScript and c++ so it came naturally.

[raimo]

What's wrong with php syntax?  I find it very similar to JavaScript and c++ so it came naturally.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't like it that's the reason I'm not using it. By the way, Perl is very similar to C++, borned from it.PHP is borned from Perl actually http://fi2.php.net/historyPerl is part of Linux-OS so I can build programs with it, or what ever needed to www-pages. PHP has some good things, but Perl is filled with beuatiful stuff.

[aspnetguy]

...and it is slow... I learned PERL in college...it was actually the first web programming language I learned. It was alright but it lacks the speed needed for large business application.

[remarc duo]

PERL and CGI are still widely used but mostly by 'old school' programmers or developers maintaining legacy applications.They still work great but there is a speed issue.PHP and ASP are about 5 times faster than CGI and ASP.Net and JSP(compiled) is even faster still. So it is not that the language isn't useful it just has been outperformed by newer languages.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Could you provide links to benchmarks. The last time I checked (about 3 months ago), Perl was faster (slightly) than PHP.I find that novice and less technical developers are better(ie faster development) in PHP but Perl experts totally outperform their juniors. When I hire newbies, they start off in PHP in a group with at least 1 Perl expert, after a while they use PHP less than 25% of the time. Obviously when real speed is required we migrate functions to C++ or C.

[aspnetguy]

Could you provide links to benchmarks. The last time I checked (about 3 months ago), Perl was faster (slightly) than PHP.I find that novice and less technical developers are better(ie faster development) in PHP but Perl experts totally outperform their juniors. When I hire newbies, they start off in PHP in a group with at least 1 Perl expert, after a while they use PHP less than 25% of the time. Obviously when real speed is required we migrate functions to C++ or C.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fprgive me for my obvious lack of understanding in this next question I will ask but hwo do you use C and C++ for web applications??? That is like saying I use visual Basic 6 to create my webp[ages...you can't you can create ActiveX objects will VB6 and as far as I know/knew you could only create com components for a webpage but not create a webpage with c++.As for the bench marks...I have no proof other than what is stated in one of my ASP books. It said something about PERL not being multi threaded...but ASP was...

[aspnetguy]

One example I can think of is my job. When I was hired my company was working with another design company to have their website hosted on a CMS the other company had written...it was in PERL.I can't say whether it was the programmers coding style that made it slow or what...but it was fairly basic so there wasn't too much processing going on....but it was super slow.I was hired and developed our own CMS in ASP.Net, ours is far more complex and processes 1000's of lines of code for each page that is displayed...and it is still much faster than the old PERL CMS.

[remarc duo]

1. Fprgive me for my obvious lack of understanding in this next question I will ask but hwo do you use C and C++ for web applications??? That is like saying I use visual Basic 6 to create my webp[ages...you can't you can create ActiveX objects will VB6 and as far as I know/knew you could only create com components for a webpage but not create a webpage with c++.2. As for the bench marks...I have no proof other than what is stated in one of my ASP books. It said something about PERL not being multi threaded...but ASP was...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

1. You have too much talent to need forgiveness. However forgive me if appear to be lecturing. So Server Side We generally host on *nix where perl and PHP works well.Getting Perl to work well on Windows is not easy. On the server its only worth going to C or C++ with heavy compute bound stuff or groupware support. Solving graphs, generating visulizations, iterpolating images though the one I seem to be using most now is compiling from Bison/Yacc generated tools. Have built libraries for both PHP and Perl, Perl apparently has some advantage for now but the Zend team will fix that. Full suites do exist for VisualC, but the only member of my teams who have done well with it was a super Guru.Have used C++ Builder and its Dbase support for serving, C++ binding is quick and easy, but Delphi and Builder were built by the same guy who devised .Net so developing should be equally easy, though .Net is heavier and thus uses more server resources.Client Side Obviously there is no C++ or C on the client side in general web apps.However done many apps where the browser is used as a frontpanel for a local (or LAN local) application. There are many Open Source tiny servers which are very light.2. Benchmarks ASP books will say ASP is faster , Perl books, Perl faster , PHP etc. ASP.net is faster because it compiles. In general they are faster in some cases not in others. Most experienced users get their tools to meet application demands.Internet aps are normally cost driven by communication limits.Itranets aps can be performance bound.Nuff said. Had to refereee too many language wars. Do Not Quote me.Hope this was not much of a time waster.

[aspnetguy]

time waster...not at all. I see what you mean about using C++ now .I just never thought of using C++ from stuff like that before...probably because I cringe at the thought of using ActiveX objects on a webpage because it is limited to IE.SO can you point me to some benchmarks. I already know PERL and am learning PHP because I thought it was faster....maybe if PERL is still better I will stick with it...maybe :)I don't see much demand for PERL programmers anymore...most of what I see (in Canada anyways) is JAVA, ASP.Net, and PHP programming jobs (for web jobs).

[remarc duo]

time waster...not at all. I see what you mean about using C++ now .I just never thought of using C++ from stuff like that before...probably because I cringe at the thought of using ActiveX objects on a webpage because it is limited to IE.SO can you point me to some benchmarks. I already know PERL and am learning PHP because I thought it was faster....maybe if PERL is still better I will stick with it...maybe :)I don't see much demand for PERL programmers anymore...most of what I see (in Canada anyways) is JAVA, ASP.Net, and PHP programming jobs (for web jobs).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I went searching , but after five minutes got interrupted by deadline clock. This is about 12 hours later.Next time I do a check I will post some results but its likely to be some time yet. I'm the CTO of a mixed Hardware Software Company and we have a chip to get out.It includes a CPU with a Script Engine accelerator, ("its assembly is Perl").Thats the reason I check the benchmarks.Last time I looked PHP and Perl were about same speed. I switch between based on the app being extended. My web gurus say to use mod_perl for serious work, its much faster than straight Perl as it only loads once. Again we are Linux server based, though we are on Windows/Linux desktop.CPAN and various Linux sites have links to Jobs in Perl, but you are right currently there is more demand for PHP, JAVA and .Net., and Ruby is up and coming, but Perl 6.00 if and when it comes out may change that. No need to wait for that PHP and Perl coexist quite well, and PHP is a good language. good bug hunting.

[Webworldx]

http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/perl/perl-vs-php.html:)I'm a fan of Perl, but yes.. until Perl 6 comes out i'm going to stick to PHP, mainly because of its easy integration with Javascript and such. I think the basis of the "speed" issue around perl comes from the old CGI scripts which are still used for guestbooks and forums around the internet that are slow and bulky. Newer perl apps seem a lot better.

[justsomeguy]

i'm going to stick to PHP, mainly because of its easy integration with Javascript

What do you mean by that?

[aspnetguy]

What do you mean by that?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Perl makes it more difficult to output html and javascript...infact you cannot mix PERL with HTML like you can with PHP...you must write only PERL and the processing you do will produce the HTML(yes 100% of the page).I did not like doing that....it is like having to echo every html tag of your page.