Martin Weber <Ephaeton / gmx.net> writes:

> After all you don't write software for
> the mere writing of the software, but for somebody else's use, too ;)

Absolutely.  Code will be read many more times than it will be written
or changed.

 
> I guess it's also an issue about languages which once were chosen to
> be used, whole departments learned them, and now they all should switch
> to another version (i.e. your program has an interpreter where you can
> launch commands in a "shell" - new syntax. Your program is used as a
> plugin/lib for own programs - new programming language) of programming
> language just to satisfy your needs ? I can understand why for at least
> some places in office environment your local admin says, "No" and sticks
> to it :)

Definitely right.  At my current workplace, Java is the language for
the main project of the small team I'm a member of.  Since we develop
a web based application, changes in the code sometimes require subtle
changes in many web pages -- things we former did in perl.  Since we
had no recommended language for these things, I started to use ruby.

It proved to be easy and fast as perl, so I stuck with it, and the
other accepted it.  Mere luck, I think.  In a bigger team or for
larger purposes, your argument would prevent the introduction of a new
language or tool.


I can add some 2? to the Ruby/Python/Perl discussion here:

Text mangling with regular expressions is a natural thing in perl,
easy and quite straightforward.

Using Python from my experience is painful, since there is a lot of
overhead compared to perl.

Using Ruby is fine, since it has the short syntax of perl and easy OO
capabilities.


Regards,
Sascha

-- 
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!