RANT: Perl

So I have this contract, right? They have a system that has two parts, a wall as it were. On one side of the wall is the company I do the work for and my stuff sits. On the other side of the wall is another company they have been working with forever who handles a different part of their business. Normally these two sides don't have to communicate much but there are some places where they do. Typically it is my side throwing information over to their side.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Perl? Because the other side of the wall insists on using Perl and only Perl. WTF! Seriously, come out of the 90's. Perl is great for patching shit together but it totally is not suitable for enterprise level applications. This is experience talking here. Years ago I worked for a company whose entire system was written in Perl. I even rewrote the entire thing in Perl. Eventually we moved to .Net because it actually works on an Enterprise level without having to fricken jury-rig everything under the sun.

Anyway, why is this bothering the heck out of me right now? Because certain people on the other side of that wall seem to be working to undermine my efforts on my side of the wall. They are contractors, as am I, so I understand the sentiment. However, it's fricken Perl! WTFBBQPWNED! Dorks. Wait, I was going to give you some specific examples.

Example 1: We have two separate databases even though a lot of data is duplicated (seriously...why do people insist on doing things the hard way...that's a different rant). They wanted to synch their database to ours on a nightly basis but since they are using MySQL (which I have no problems with and like) and we are using SQL Server we couldn't easily schedule a replication process. So I suggested that I could setup a web service to allow them to pull data from us nightly or weekly or whatever and they could do whatever they wanted with it. A web service is a STANDARD method of B2B communications that has been around for quite a while now. It is a mature method for languages that are capable of being fricken standard. Wow, the anger. So I setup this web service and, surprise of surprises, they can't consume it because Perl is shit. Eventually they figure it out and all is well. This leads directly to...

Example 2: My side of the wall is in competition with some other companies to land a contract with a well-known company to provide them with data. During the intial conversations I, once again because it fricken works, sugggest that we use a web service to transfer the data. They agree. I also suggest, because of Example 1, that before we sign any contracts or whatever that we have a communications test to make sure they can actually consume a web-service since they are using some propritary language that I am not familiar with. Again, they agree. After that meeting but before the communication test we have another meeting, this time the guy that runs the company on the other side of the wall is involved because we will need to pass information over to him. We kinda go over the plan to use a web serivce and he goes 'Well, are you sure you can make that work? I know you had trouble with that when we tried to implement it.' Can you believe that shit! Fucking Perl guru punkass. I didn't have any problems, the issues were on their side because they insist on using FUCKING PERL. To quote Team America: Jesus Christ Titty Fucking.

So we move forward, have the communications test, have some minor issues on their end that were quickly resolved...WHAM, communication works. Funny how mature standard business practices work, aren't they? Everyones happy and then I hear from the person running the show on my side of the fence that there are doubts that what we want to do isn't possible. I'm like 'What?' and she's like 'Yea, are we sure it is possible?' and I'm like 'This is rocket sceince. It is pretty straight-forward and the hard part is over (the communications test)' and she's like 'Yea, that is what I thought'. Well, guess where the doubt is coming from...you guessed it, Perl world! No shit they would think it isn't possible, it's fucking PERL!

Wow. Just wow. And let's not forget that this other group seem to have a habit of overstressing how difficult things are going to be to change. Actually, now that I think about it, I bet they aren't overstressing. It probably is just that hard because its FUCKING PERL.

Ok, Rant over.