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Please help me to formulate a strong argument against these senseless accusations and show him that Perl is a truly elegant language and can do whatever Java does in less time.

I think you first have to invent a time-machine. Let's go over the arguments:

To consolidate the total number of languages in use by the Competency, leading to more efficient use of staff

That's a valid argument. Of course, it's not an argument for any specific language - just an argument to drop one or more.

Unsuitability of the language itself for large-scale development i.e poor IDE support, debugging support, GUI, Web work, etc - this was documented in the "Mid Range Language Strategy Document" last year.

Well, if you wanted a strong argument, you should have written an equivalent document last year. It should focus on how the languages are used in your company. If you have to turn elsewhere to find arguments, doesn't that mean you actually don't have a good argument yourself?

There's nothing you can do in Perl that you can't do in Java.

Depending on how you look at it. Certain programming techniques you can use in Perl you can't use in Java - but if you consider a program as a black box, you can't construct a Perl program that does things a Java program can't.

This position was cemented by the Perl-Java bake-off which demonstrated Java to be at least equivalent in speed to Perl and after much grunting this was accepted, except by some "old crusties", I suspect mainly for INERTIA reasons.

Well, there you lost another chance - note the past tense. Where was your input in the bake-off?

In fact with the new design reviews, any Perl implementations will not get past that gate.

Uhm, that's not an argument, but a policy, isn't?

As you can see, the person who came up with these "accusations" doesn't really have much idea about Perl, and certainly not the wonderful things Perl can do.

I can't see that. In fact, your arguments make me think that the decision wasn't taking lightly, and the judgement was made on actual research, and not based on an article read in some managers magazine. If all companies did such research before making decisions like that, the world would be a happy place.

And most of all, the honor of us Perl programmers are at stake.

Well, so is the honor of Java programmers.

I think you have a couple of options:

Adapt. Start programming in Java. Explore new worlds.
Rebel. Refuse to write in Java. You may get fired.
Focus. Mainly write utility scripts. That's where Perl shines as well.
Trump. Write your programs in Java. Write them in Perl as well. Make sure the Perl ones are faster/resource friendlier/quicker to develop/more robust/more maintainer friendly, without the Java programs being mediocre. Do this for the majority of the programs you write.
Leave. Get a job elsewhere.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Is Java really better than Perl??? by Abigail-II
in thread Is Java really better than Perl??? by Roger

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