Re: recommended programming language for postgresql

On Jan 25, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:

> On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 21:22 -0500, Jason Dixon wrote:
>> If you have to ask, then you're probably a prime candidate for PHP.  I
>> prefer Perl, but it gives me features you might not need.
>
> Wanna go into some detail here? Curious. :-)

By the tone of Ramon's post, he hasn't done much programming.  If web
programming with a database is going to be the extent of his
programming repertoire, then PHP is a good fit for him.  However, I do
a lot of other projects that stress complex data structures, regular
expressions and the ability to craft my own OO frameworks (at times).
These goals align themselves with the strengths of languages like Perl,
Python and Ruby.  That's not to say that you can't use PCRE with PHP,
but the language has some limitations which bother me, in this order:

1) Security - a never-ending series of exploits and patches.  From a
sysadmin's perspective, it's a PITA.  Rodolfo, I expect you know where
I'm coming from.
2) No lexical scoping (namespaces within a block)
3) Promotes the interweaving of logic and presentation

There are other things that will remain unmentioned as I could go on
for hours.  Needless to say, it's a sufficient language for many web
developers.  Unfortunately, it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not going to pretend that you can pick Perl up as quickly as PHP,
but I can say that it will probably be worth the time investment.

--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net