Re: perl in an Ada-mandated world

[cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!news.service.uci.edu!net work.ucsd.edu!news.cerf.net!netlabs!lwall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Wall)]

In article <EMERY.93Apr8091553@goldfinger.mitre.org> emery@goldfinger.mitre.org
 (David Emery) writes:
: I don't know where you get your information, but I can assure you that
: the last development project *we* did here was 99.44% Ada (see my
: posting on RPCs).  MITRE is a big place, and I'm sure there are people
: doing things in PERL.  But I know of no major system (e.g. AWACS,
: Joint STARS, SDI) using PERL.

And anyone who writes a major, "mission critical", system using Perl is
totally nuts anyway (even if Perl does have "packages", and numbers like
10_000_000.)  Perl isn't a Lego language, it's an Elmer's language.
Use non-discrete structural materials with discretion.

Frankly, if I got on a 787, and the pilot announced that the author of
the language in which the plane's avionics were written had just
boarded the plane, I'd get right back off again, whether or not the
pilot meant me.  Mission critical software *shouldn't* have one author.
There are other kinds of software which *should* have one author.

Whenever people have silly debates I love to agree with both sides.
It confuses them more than if I disagree with both sides...

Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com