SPUG: Java, Perl, large-scale projects

Steve Howell showell at hargray.com
Thu Jun 13 19:58:20 CDT 2002

Large scale projects are rarely powered by a single language.  Even so-called
"pure Perl" or "pure Java" projects often owe their scalability to other
languages, since the projects tend to use operating systems, file systems,
networking software, and relational databases that are written in C or other
low-level languages.

You have to be careful about how you classify a project as "large."  Sometimes
the scale of the software doesn't necessarily match the scale of the problem
solved.  Often the key to solving a large problem is decomposing that problem
into a bunch of smaller problems.  I can't see how using Perl would ever hinder
that process.  I could see how a monolithic approach to problem-solving could
hinder that process.  How well does Java interact with other languages, compared
to Perl?

What are some of the larger software projects in this day and age?  I would
throw out Google, Oracle, and eBay for starters.  Does anybody know what they

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