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BBC Creates 'Perl on Rails'
Bogtha writes "Long-time users of Perl for their public websites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails' that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their websites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well."
Take two of the weirdest looking syntaxes and fuse them together. Life time employment.
Sounds to me like a bunch of Perl coders with a few million lines of corporate code who thought this would be easier than learning another language for one specific smallish project.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Strange it may be, but incomprehensible and a run-on it's not.
"Long-time users of Perl for their public websites," - an appositive
"and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites," - another appositive, successfully connected with a conjunction
"the BBC" - the subject of the sentence (which the appositives are in apposition to)
"have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails'" - a perfectly fine predicate
"that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings," - with a relative clause
"while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites." - and another modifying clause.
In short: it's a sentence. It's grammatical. It's comprehensible. Quit whining.
Flat files that are pre-generated from a database backend, maybe. As in a cron job each night that does something like "for show in db.select(shows): generatestaticpage(show)". I'd be amazed if the whole site was just one big Dreamweaver folder that gets published.
I really can't imagine what their circumstances would have to be for it to be a sane option to rewrite Ruby on Rails in Perl."We have a database engine. We have a template system. We have a language that everyone in-house knows. Let's write a generalized method for combining the three!"
I suspect that happens a lot more often than you'd think. If anything, I consider it a testament to the BBC that they've decided to release their code so that everyone else doesn't have to reinvent it.
Disclaimer: I much prefer Python, and to me the BBC is that extra channel that has "Coupling" and "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares". I have no special love for Perl or the BBC. I just think that it's pretty cool of them to do this and wish them luck.
Nice sig, BTW. :-)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
> $ is for scalar, @ is for array, # is for hash
:)
% is for hash. And that's not really a good rule.
Given %hash, it's called @hash{@keys} when you slice it, and $hash{$key} when you only want one element. References always are scalar, so even though $foo->{bar}[42][2]{baz} is referencing a hash of arrays of arrays of hashes, you have a $ on the front.
Once you know the rules, it's fine... but it's not necessarily Perl's finest point (and this all changes in Perl 6 as a result). Even if you like Perl, you have to admit that there are lots of things wrong with it.
There are just less things wrong with Perl than any other language
My other car is first.
I mean... say no more. A nudge is as good as a wink to a blind bat..
Seriously though I dont know what the BBC is doing, smoking its way through £130m PA ($260m) of public money on computer "projects", like re-inventing mplayer/iPlayer/MediaPlayer.. Haven't we already done this? Shouldn't Aunty Beeb leave the hard-coding to the free market & concentrate on what it does best - artistic/jounalistic output?
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
Personally I don't know why people are always jumping to the 'language of the week'. I don't think 'progress' is the answer. I think too many programmers suffer from the 'we want the coolest new gadget' syndrome. Perl is a good and able language and if they have implemented another tool to help them do their job, then good on them. Why the hell should they bother to learn another platform. That is a ridiculous and juvenile argument. Constantly having to learn new languages just because a new flavour comes along reduces productivity, and makes it difficult to hire new people as there will never be enough people who know the languages on the bleeding edge. Meanwhile they probably have tons of Perl code already in place working just fine. So what if they don't like to use your favourite tool of the week and want to advertise their own favourite. No matter what you may say, they still know how to successfully build and implement one of the highest trafficked news web sites in the world. Shove that in you pipe and smoke it. Get a grip for Christ's sake.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Ahh, the old 'double negative' development methodology. They should have just gone with Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, that's got full enterprise grade quadruple negative power.