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Tell me, what major sites have been build using Ruby?

I can list several very high volume sites/applications that use Perl.

I get sick of the 'standard' backlash every time a Perl article is posted. Why do people have such a problem with Perl? It's an excellent, high-level general purpose programming language with a huge range of extension modules available. I have personally used Perl for many projects, as do TicketMaster, ValueClick, Morgan Stanley and Ryanair and I've also learnt a lot about software engineering and computing through Perl.

Of course you are right. But let's not forget that there are also lots of completely useless Perl projects as well.

Yes, it does include a lot of symbols, but there is payback to learning them, and really most programs won't use much beyond $ % # () [] {}. Unlike some languages, Perl is not what I would describe as a 'bondage' language. If you want to program sloppy, you can program sloppy. That's fine by Perl. And this generousity is what gives Perl its bad reputation. This is funny since I and most knowledgeable Perl programmers can write perfectly clear and maintainable code. The way we do this is no secret--it's just by commenting appropriately, using meaningful identifier names and following the Perl style guidelines.

People can mock Perl all they like, but it is still a widely used powerful programming language and I am more productive in it than any other language. As a parting comment, a Cisco employee once told me (off the record of course!) that "Cisco would fall apart without Perl".

Something like "Be Free Ad Serving Technology." They provided redirection services when I was a Google affiliate (which provided me a whopping $0.00 in income; I was just below their threshold when they cancelled it).

A quick Google search suggests that BFAST is a brand owned by ValueClick, an advertising company.

... with a German geek-toys site à la thinkgeek. Since I hadn't the money to build up the logistic part around it, I tried it as a reseller. I found a good (German) affilate program (zanox), that lets me choose products out of the participant's catalogues and get a revenue of 5% of every sold item. Additionally, every participant delivers a couple of banners in every needed format.

I mix the affilate program with amazon stuff, using their reseller program and make the products the content of the site.

Using movabletype and keeping in mind some main ideas of google in mind (search terms in filename and in the header, etc.) I finaly made my site to appear on top in google using some interesting keywords (dialer blocker (a tool to stop troyan horses dialing expensive numbers), div x or mx 700).

Additionally, I show banner ads. I show both, valueclick banners from external sponsors and 'internal' ones (sending the users to products or shops of the affiliate program or even sending them to the bestsellers of my site).

The content based ads are making around 3/4 of the money, the rest is devided in 4/5 of the affiliate banners and 1/5 (only a couple of Euros per month) through valueclick.

All in all, I have around 1500 visitors per month generating around 140.000 hits. It pays the traffic, but not my work (I've to post at least one new product a day).

The most important thing is that I have two other software products (ImagePuzzler and ImageDupe) I can advertise for on my site. Since ImageDupe's website is an often linked site and ImageDupe links back to futuregeek.de I got a little 'google-bonus' from it.

All ads and clicks (even the valueclick's) are tracked using phpAdsNew and 99% of my visitors come from google, the rest is yahoo, lycos and a german meta search engine. Since I don't trust webalizer (especially the search engine identifier), I wrote my own script, that keeps an eye on the referers.

who is profiting from the development of perl

Well, for one, me. The company I work for relies greatly on perl, our whole web-serving infrastructure is built on perl. When there is a bug in perl, we need it fixed, and we need it fixed now, which is why we have invested so much in Perl. I am at least proud to say that my company is wise enough to give back to the community, both by providing a mirror and even going as far as hosting perl.org(Look at the very bottom :-) )

P.S- sorry guys, had to post anon coward this time for obvious reasons.

My favorite esoteric language is also on that site, Piet. It's the only language I can think of, aside from Befunge, that uses a 2-D array - an image, actually, that's supposed to look like abstract art - and direction, movement, etc, for instructions and program control. Someone *ahem* also wrote an interpreter for Piet with Perl and ImageMagick - Piet::Interpreter. Look for it on a CPAN near you.

As a reader of the Slashing Dot for over 10 years, I have grown to appreciate the unique literary stylings of Dr. Robert Malda and Dr. Jeffrey Bates. However, the recent shakeout in the Internet industry has caused many web-sites to close. I have helped such sites as Yahoo! to retain their core demographic profiles while adding value. Did you know that Yahoo! adds over 1,000 value to every page on their Internet web-site (hereinafter "Intersite") every day, whereas Slashdot's value adding is minimal?

I have here some tips for adding additional value to the Slashdot Intersite.

• Add support for value-added tags, such as TABLE, IMG, and IFRAME. Our partners especially prefer the IFRAME, as it gives them more control over the content.
• Utilize the Microsoft Internet Explorer feature enabling alternatively colored scroll bars. The different colors help to accent your web site's look and feel, and can be copyrighted to lock in the value.
• I have found that over 50% of Slashdot users use a product like the Junking Buster to get rid of banner ads. For that reason, I would like to propose in-comment advertising. More on that later.
• Allow every user to select an icon, and replace all emoticons in their comments (such as the value-starved ":)") with colorful images (such as ). In keeping with Slashdot's current settings, the GIF format is designated as the standard for these small icons.
• Remove the clause declaring that users own their own comments, once again enabling Dr. Jonathan Katz to publish a book which adds value to them.
• Sever ties with Google. Use a more value-added search engine like Goto.com.
• Use a META tag to make all pages refresh every 5 minutes to maximize banner impressions.
• Make all external links open in a new window, preferably behind the current browser window.
• Utilize a more value-added language, such as ASP.NET, instead of the current Perl.com.

These represent just a small segment of the ideas that I and my organization wish to do. Now, about that in-comment advertising. Consider the following comment, taken (per Fair Use laws) from a recent discussion on office software.

As an enterprise customer, I just can't see us using Microsoft Works. Microsoft Office XP provides us with much more value. For example, our corporate intranet just set up an award-winning SharePoint server which allows us to collaborate more proactively.

As an enterprise customer, I just can't see us using Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Works (check latest prices). For the best airfare, choose Expedia.com. Microsoft Office XP (check for software reviews - check latest prices) provides us with much more value. For example, our corporate intranet (intranet solutions by Nortel) just set up an award-winning SharePoint server which allows us to collaborate more proactively.

Let's check the amount of value in each of those paragraphs.

First paragraph: 3 value
Second paragraph: 1500 value

I hope that you will consider our suggestions for a better Slashdot Intersite. As you have seen, our solutions increase value without modifying your content in any way. I look forward to speaking with you soon!

As a reader of the Slashing Dot for over 10 years, I have grown to appreciate the unique literary stylings of Dr. Robert Malda and Dr. Jeffrey Bates. However, the recent shakeout in the Internet industry has caused many web-sites to close. I have helped such sites as Yahoo! to retain their core demographic profiles while adding value. Did you know that Yahoo! adds over 1,000 value to every page on their Internet web-site (hereinafter "Intersite") every day, whereas Slashdot's value adding is minimal?

I have here some tips for adding additional value to the Slashdot Intersite.

• Add support for value-added tags, such as TABLE, IMG, and IFRAME. Our partners especially prefer the IFRAME, as it gives them more control over the content.
• Utilize the Microsoft Internet Explorer feature enabling alternatively colored scroll bars. The different colors help to accent your web site's look and feel, and can be copyrighted to lock in the value.
• I have found that over 50% of Slashdot users use a product like the Junking Buster to get rid of banner ads. For that reason, I would like to propose in-comment advertising. More on that later.
• Allow every user to select an icon, and replace all emoticons in their comments (such as the value-starved ":)") with colorful images (such as ). In keeping with Slashdot's current settings, the GIF format is designated as the standard for these small icons.
• Remove the clause declaring that users own their own comments, once again enabling Dr. Jonathan Katz to publish a book which adds value to them.
• Sever ties with Google. Use a more value-added search engine like Goto.com.
• Use a META tag to make all pages refresh every 5 minutes to maximize banner impressions.
• Make all external links open in a new window, preferably behind the current browser window.
• Utilize a more value-added language, such as ASP.NET, instead of the current Perl.com.

These represent just a small segment of the ideas that I and my organization wish to do. Now, about that in-comment advertising. Consider the following comment, taken (per Fair Use laws) from a recent discussion on office software.

As an enterprise customer, I just can't see us using Microsoft Works. Microsoft Office XP provides us with much more value. For example, our corporate intranet just set up an award-winning SharePoint server which allows us to collaborate more proactively.

As an enterprise customer, I just can't see us using Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Works (check latest prices). For the best airfare, choose Expedia.com. Microsoft Office XP (check for software reviews - check latest prices) provides us with much more value. For example, our corporate intranet (intranet solutions by Nortel) just set up an award-winning SharePoint server which allows us to collaborate more proactively.

Let's check the amount of value in each of those paragraphs.

First paragraph: 3 value
Second paragraph: 1500 value

I hope that you will consider our suggestions for a better Slashdot Intersite. As you have seen, our solutions increase value without modifying your content in any way. I look forward to speaking with you soon!

• TeknoSurf.com (has moved to www.advertising.com - you'll get a redirect)
  
  • A mix of pay per clickthrough and pay per banner, with mainly pay per click
  • Minimum 1000 impressions per month
• ValueClick
  • Pay per click only
  • Minimum 15000 impressions per month
• CyberBounty
  • Seems to be pay per user that accept free stuff from sponsors through them, or buy stuff from sponsors (mostly the former)
  • Minimum 350 unique visitors per day

Eivind.

Obviously using Apache/mod_perl, FreeBSD, lots of Perl stuff, MySQL and other nice open source packages.

:-)

- ask