[rescue] spam WPOISON

[Dave McGuire]

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 04:42 PM, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
>>> For this application I wouldn't even consider C.
>>
>> I would.
>
> Err... your choice... not right, not wrong... just a different 
> choice...
> (and for this app, not my choice)

   The "right tool for the job" is not usually a matter of opinion.

> Given a running webserver with a memory resident language choice (Perl,
> PHP, possibly others), I would use that technology because it is 
> there, and
> it is resident.  It may not be the fastest, but speed is not 
> everything.
> There is the overhead of file handles, process management, memory 
> management,
> etc.... the fastest solution is not always necessarily the best 
> solution.

   Where computers are concerned, assuming the job is being done right 
(i.e. good error handling, etc) the fastest solution usually *is* the 
best solution.

> Doing text processing in Perl or PHP is friendlier and more enjoyable. 
>  I
> don't potentially need to deal with memory management issues, the 
> language
> is resident (in the case of modPerl and PHP), etc.  Seems to me more 
> fit
> to the task at hand than C.

   You write it once, and you run it potentially billions of times.  In 
recent years, there has been a very disturbing shift from "use language 
xyz because it's better suited to the task" to "use language xyz 
because it's easier".  The notion of programmer time being more 
valuable than CPU time has always been bogus, and in this suit-fucked 
economy with half the professional programmers on this list being 
unemployed, it's even MORE bogus.

   Do it right...or don't do it at all.  Multiple programming languages 
exist because no one language is the best tool for all jobs...not 
because no one language is the easiest.  There's a reason, for example, 
why the language of choice in the HPC and scientific communities after 
all these years is still FORTRAN, which the "all computers are either 
web servers or web browsers" crowd seems to think is obsolete.

> BTW, if you want this to be really efficient, code in native assembly 
> and
> even better... in assembly as a Apache module.  The ultimate in 
> efficiency.

   That'd make it nonportable.  If Jon writes it in MIPS assembler on 
his SGI, I'd not be able to run it on my web server, which is an 
UltraSPARC-II.  The ultimate form of ineffeciency is uselessness.

           -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                 "You don't have Vaseline in Canada?"
St. Petersburg, FL                     -Bill Bradford