InfoWorld: Many Large Corporations Avoid Using Scripting Languages for What They Do Best
Slashdot pointed out that Chad Dickerson spent an entire column discussing the fact that some major corporations discourage the use of scripting languages like Perl and Python to solve problems to which they are uniquely suited. According to the article:
Although it has often been subtle, there is a level of quiet discomfort between the “scripting” versus “programming” factions in some corporate development environments in which I have participated. In some instances, executive-level technology management has held scripting languages in disdain as not being “real” languages for day-to-day problem solving, which has discouraged highly talented scripters on staff from practicing their craft....
On a practical level, I’ve found that two things happen in these environments: 1) many of the most talented scripters eventually become disgruntled and leave for scripting-friendly pastures, and 2) the “real” developers spend days and weeks writing Java and C++ code to solve problems that those talented Perl or Python programmers could have knocked out in a few hours.
In our experience, this is definitely true in environments that do not have a long history of UNIX usage.
You'd think that Windows shops would be more open to scripting languages like Perl and Python, since many depend on Visual Basic for strategic applications. However, sites that use Visual Basic do a lot of development using IDEs, while Perl and Python are generally not used in those contexts.