[plug] Perl vs PHP

[Jason :)]

Christian <christian at amnet.net.au> said:

> If you learn Perl then you have the option of using it for
> many different things -- it's not a dead-end web scripting language like
> PHP.  Perl can do everything PHP can do (I personally prefer Embperl for
> web scripting) and many, many times more.  

I don't know much about Perl at all, but PHP scripts can be used for more 
than web-scripting. I've seen people use the CGI version of PHP, for example, 
to run scripts in a cron job that perform tasks such as backing up databases.

> With Perl you are learning a
> generic tool that you can use for many different things and, in this
> industry, who knows what they will be doing in a few years time?  If, in
> five years time, the predominant application architecture of the
> Internet changes from HTTP to something else then your Perl code likely
> won't require wholesale changes.  On the other hand, your PHP may very
> well be useless.

And who's to say Perl will be around in five years time? Anyway, what's 
stopping someone from building a PHP parser into a [new-predominant-
application-architecture] server to produce dynamic XML/whatever the latest 
format is? If Perl could be made to work with it I'm sure PHP could. From 
what I know they're both just scripting languages.


As for the original question, use whichever you are most comfortable with and 
whichever gets the job done best. It really depends on what it is you're 
building.




Jason :)



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