When developing in Perl, yesterday evening, I noticed something that favours Perl to java. When running my application, I did the following:
perl -I ./lib -MMyApp -emain
This is similar to java:
java -cp ./lib com.stupidcompany.myapp.MyApp
(Calls the magical main method on MyApp class)
So far, so good! When I finish up my application in Perl, I can install it in the 'site_perl' directory of installed modules (using ExtUtils::MakeMaker - cross platform and standard), and then I can do:
perl -MMyApp -emain
Java, on the opposite, does not has a notion of a central class/package repository on a local machine. Instead, java app vendors deliver a long list of .jar files and such that you must include in your CLASSPATH environment variable ... in the end, you have to type up a zillion classpath entries to get a stupid app running. (Everyone who has toyed -what else can you do in java? - with XML in java knows about the classpath hell).
java -cp "~/javalibs/a.jar;b.jar;c.jar;... ad infinitum" com.stupidcompany.magicmain.MagicMain
Perl is good, it provides me with a central repository for my modules!
Regards,
Johan
