The kicker, "Choose scripting languages for dynamic and maintainable Web apps," perfectly expresses what I was after. From there, I wanted to give those with an MIS background perspective on how scripting--with any of the obvious choices--will make their lives better. Byte's idea was to talk more about technical differences between the languages: how object-oriented each is, who's using a byte-code compiler, and so on. Perhaps that creative tension yielded a better synthesis than either side would have achieved in isolation.
... but fewer URLs. Our drafts had a lot more URLs than the published version.
The published version asserts
One drawback of standard Tcl has been that it lacks code module structures -- except procedures.I do know about namespaces, of course--'use 'em all the time, myself. I apologize for the confusion this sentence is sure to engender (and thank Chris Nelson for spotting it).
The principal languages covered in the article were JavaScript, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl.
We've written more specifically about choosing a particular scripting language elsewhere.
First, I quite agree with him that the NT-bound deserve a practical scripting environment to work effectively [give reference to WSH developments]. Not only is MKS's ksh quite reliable in this role, but ksh is certainly capable for CGI work, and it's possible to buy tksh, which gives ksh developers a handy GUI capability. We didn't mention ksh in our article mostly because there's no release for Mac OS. Even beyond that, we were little inclined to mention ksh, because it seems to us
Our principal aim with this article was to reach experienced MIS workers now missing out on the great opportunities scripting offers them. We particularly wanted to show how unfrightening and secure it can be to begin to "Webify" existing processes. Toward this end, we restricted ourselves to scripting technologies available conveniently in common MIS situations. AppleScript's restriction to MacOS disqualified it. We recognize that, in Mr. Larsson's words, "as an scripting language is it quite good. Used in many web servers, and interestingly, used by many who usually not do either programming nor scripting."
A secondary consideration is that AppleScript is not a general-purpose language. It confines itself rather strictly to scripting (other) applications. This is a design choice that deserves more analysis and consideration than it's received yet. For this article, though, it would have been a distraction for our target audience. Now, the scripting languages such as Python, JavaScript, and so on, which are also suitable for general-purpose data processing, are in the ascendant.
I expect many readers will want to know where to download copies of interpreters for these languages that they can use themselves, and also how to arrange for contractual support, training, and so on. I'll write up these details as I make time. If you have an urgent need, e-mail me.
We've also compared scripting languages in more general contexts, and profiled open-source software, among our other writings.
Perl certainly is in wide use; did you know that there are commercial Web hosts or ISPs which offer access to Python, Rexx, and Tcl?