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Do Scripters Suffer Discrimination?
TheTheologian writes "In his InfoWorld column, Chad Dickerson says 'there is a level of quiet discomfort between the "scripting" versus "programming" factions in some corporate development environments in which I have participated. In some instances, executive-level technology management has held scripting languages in disdain as not being "real" languages for day-to-day problem solving, which has discouraged highly talented scripters on staff from practicing their craft. In such an environment, scripters are relegated to the lower ranks ... ' He goes on to say that some companies will assign Java and C++ programmers tasks that take them weeks but could be done by Perl or Python programmers in a few hours. Is it true that some companies are so overcome with code bias they'd assign weeks of unnecessary work rather than give it to the scripting untouchables?"
I have written a web-application (game) in PHP... and a friend who is a java snob (he feels no other language is worthwhile any more... and I have to listen to it... :P) constantly is saying thing like "well in java - that problem doesn't exist because [insert long winded arrogance]", or "loose types are a short path to hell - and that's where you're headed with PHP" and "PHP isn't a real language anyway - no one would use it at an enterprise level"...
:P
Pointing out that Yahoo is now using it as their default language - and that Rasmus (author of PHP) actually was hired by Yahoo as a result is simply dismissed as bad judgement on their part.
It's like arguing religion or politics...
So I just sit back and listen to the tirade - and try not to egg him on...
BlackNova Traders
modern scripting languages are every bit as maintainable as C, C++, or Java.
Maybe not quite true for Perl, but for Python, this is an understatement.
I've never seen code written in any low-level lanugage, much less in Java (!) that was half as readable as the equivalent code written in python
The only real disadvantage of interpreted/scripting languages is raw power. They are just a greater abstraction from pure machine code than lower level languages like C, etc., which are themselves abstractions from that machine code.
I have dazzled many enterprises in an emergency by delivering Perl scripts in hours or days that do amazing things. BUT once the emergency was addressed and they began to look under the hood and saw it was Perl script they had me re-engineer it in C++ or Java (weeks to develop...) because they had no one on staff (besides me) that could support the Perl. They spent the money for the increased amount of time for development to reduce cost in long term support.