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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."
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?
Perl is readable to those that know Perl. I know Perl and I find idiomatic Perl readable.
And "job security" language choices is just as much a problem with regular employees as consultants. As a consultant there's been more then one occasion where I had to go and clean up the mess after some bored employee made an "interesting" language or framework choice presumably to keep themselves interested.
-- John.