Recommend a book

[Walter Giesbrecht]

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Linda Hyman wrote:

> I suppose I should send my two cents worth to the listserv and start a
> raging debate over PERL vs. JavaScript...
> 

 [citations to two Perl books deleted]

>  You might want to check out JavaScript though before you go to deeply into
> yucky old PERL.  

... stuff deleted ...

> We see the demise of PERL imminent except for special uses.
> 
> As a non-programmer, I took one look at PERL and said "no way."  I am
> finding JavaScript very approachable and with immediate results.  Another
> big plus for JavaScript, it debugs!!  Good luck debugging a PERL script.
> Nuff said.  I would do some research before I put alot of time into PERL.
> Do some quick research to compare capabilities and decide exactly what it
> is that you need to do.  Good luck.
> 

The problem with all of this is that *every* browser (I think) can 
initiate the execution of a Perl script; Javascript is restricted (again, 
I *think*) to Netscape versions 2 and up. Unless you want the bells and 
whistles accessible to only this subset of your users, you'd better know 
something about Perl (or C, I guess) or have only static web pages. 
Javascript probably won't be usable by the majority of users for at least 
2-3 Web years (i.e., 6 months in human years).

Oh, what the hell -- learn both and have some fun.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walter W. Giesbrecht               walterg at yorku.ca    
York University Libraries 
North York, Ontario, Canada