As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a Java anti-fan. As such, one of my duties is to attempt to correct the misleading Java propaganda. But I have to make sure I don’t go too far and create misleading propaganda of my own.
Someone recently asked: Can Java technology beat Perl on its home turf with pattern matching in large files?
Given the supplied answer, a more accurate question would have been: “Can a poorly written Java program beat a really badly written Perl program?”
I could easily retort with another stupid example showing Perl code kicking Java’s ass, but that wouldn’t help. We need a more objective way of measuring how crap Java is :-)
The Language Level system by Capers Jone is a nice way to rate a language, but other empirical comparisons are needed.