Member Avatar for ep2002

Hi all,

Michelle here.

I want to know, objectively, LOL yeh right, who thinks Pearl is better than PHP & why & if it's just as easy to find a Pearl Programmer than a PHP programmer.

This is for DB applications.

Pls. only respond to this thread if you know PHP & Pearl really well.

Thanks & have a great night :)


Michelle

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Short practical takeaway for : there is no universal “better” — pick the language that fits the project, the hosting environment, and the people who will maintain the code. correctly flags Perl’s power and the risk of unreadable one-liners; that is a maintainability trade-off you can control with coding standards and tests. ’s speed comment is overly general — startup/CGI overhead can hurt any language, and real performance depends on how the app is deployed. is right that server configuration matters for perceived speed and compatibility.

Concrete things to clarify with the programmer who prefers Perl:

  • Why Perl for this project? Ask for specific libraries or frameworks and why they match your DB needs.
  • How will the app connect to the database? Ask for examples of parameterized queries, transaction handling, and error/retry logic.
  • How will it be deployed and monitored? (plain CGI, a persistent process manager, or something else) — deployment affects both performance and hosting cost.
  • What testing, documentation, and version-control practices will be used? Request sample unit/functional tests.
  • Who will maintain it long term? Confirm availability of developers and a handover plan.

Quick evaluation task to request (30-90 minutes): a small CRUD page that accepts parameterized input, returns paginated results, includes basic tests, and a short README with deployment steps and a simple load/profile observation. That demo shows practical competence faster than arguing language pros/cons.

Final note: language choice matters less than architecture, secure DB handling (no inline concatenated SQL), testing, and a clear deployment/maintenance plan. If the candidate can justify their choice with concrete design, tests, and a reproducible deployment, that is a stronger signal than the name of the language.

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Member Avatar for oberoc

That is very subjective question. I know both php and perl well(not pearl, that is something you give your gf). Perl can become very messy very quickly and can become quite unreadable. But on the other hand, it is very very powerful. And allows you to do some powerful coding in a very short coding segments. Furthermore, it has been around for a lot longer that PHP. I believe that you are talking about a couple of things when you mention the perl in a web context. You are talking about mod_perl which is an embedded perl interpreter that is a module that loaded into apache at run-time. And for the database access and cgi.pm for the web end of it.

-HTH,
Tino

Member Avatar for Gary King

PHP is much faster than slow as heck Perl. Perl must run in /cgi-bin/ folder I believe.

PHP has much, MUCH better integration with the other free, open source database, MySQL.

PHP + MySQL are like buddies - when you think of one, you immediately think of the other.

Also, with the new release of PHP 5 - what is there to NOT like? :D

Member Avatar for ep2002

Thanks guys.

The reason I was asking, is b/c a potential programmer I might be doing biz with stated right off the bat he wanted to use Perl (sorry for the mispell) instead of PHP & I wanted to check what others thought.

He is a very devoted programmer who takes his time to do it right.

Would it be safe to assume that most Perl programmes are like that?

Thanks


Michelle :)

PHP is much faster than slow as heck Perl. Perl must run in /cgi-bin/ folder I believe.

PHP has much, MUCH better integration with the other free, open source database, MySQL.

PHP + MySQL are like buddies - when you think of one, you immediately think of the other.

Also, with the new release of PHP 5 - what is there to NOT like? :D

Member Avatar for Gary King

Would it be safe to assume that most Perl programmes are like that?

Why would you say that? Programmers who program in different languages are sometimes more careful and sometimes not, and same with devoted programmers, etc.

I don't see where you getting at with that question, it's very confusing as there really isn't much basis to put that statement on :confused:

Member Avatar for ep2002

Sorry for the delay.

I was just wondering what other people thought & if Perl is harder to do than PHP, then I was just guessing that one has to be more intracit (sp?), but I understand your POV that everyone is different.

Thanks


Michelle

Why would you say that? Programmers who program in different languages are sometimes more careful and sometimes not, and same with devoted programmers, etc.

I don't see where you getting at with that question, it's very confusing as there really isn't much basis to put that statement on :confused:

Member Avatar for Ragnarok

PHP is much faster than slow as heck Perl. Perl must run in /cgi-bin/ folder I believe.

That isn't totally true, you can install Perl in the same was as PHP on most web-server aplications (you can also do it the other way as well). If you install Perl the same was a PHP it is just as fast. Saying that most of the software you can download on the web wont work if you install it that way and require a CGI Bin.

Member Avatar for Gary King

Let's see what GF has to say about it :)

:D

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