I'd give up Perl tomorrow if only...

[David Mitchell]

> Among other things, it's one of the reasons I'm tinkering with a Perl
> ORB.
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlorb
> 
> If you use a Python ORB, such a Fnorb,
> [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fnorb], on the Python side, you should
> be able to write wrappers for your favourite Perl module pretty easily
> and use them from Python.
> 
> Yes, it's stop-gap, but when you already have a non-trivial Perl module,
> either on CPAN or in-house, it can save a lot of rewriting. What we
> *really* need to do is dynamically create CORBA interfaces for Perl
> modules, but that might be impossible given that Perl is like Python in
> that module and class interfaces aren't pre-declared :(
> 
> Anyway, feel free to email me if you want to try this approach and you
> need guidance.

Thanks Derek, I'll check these out over the weekend.  I knew of the
existence of Fnorb, but not perlorb

I've thought several times "why don't I just start porting e.g. DBI and
DBD::Oracle myself, and maybe someone else will do DBD::*", and we'd then
be on our way.  Time, as always, is the big problem - I just don't have
the time on my hands to take on such a big task myself, and commit to
supporting and updating it afterwards, although I'd happily commit small
chunks of time to such a project.

I'm busy playing with Jython at the moment to see if I can deal with the
problem from another angle.  Like Perl, Java's also got some nice
"generic" solutions (e.g. JDBC) to common problems, and Jython looks like
potentially a really nice fit for a bunch of people I know who are struggling
with WebSphere at present.  WebSphere on sites that need to change rapidly is a
particularly ugly mix...

Regards

David Mitchell