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Perl on Rails (2007)

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#3

... I'm guessing it was replaced by something a while ago now?

Looks like a mixture of React and AWS Lambda

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8673fe2a-e876-4...

https://static.files.bbci.co.uk/core/storybook/index.html?pa...

> The vast majority of the BBC’s webpages are rendered on AWS, using React. React’s isomorphic nature allows us to render the pages server-side (for best performance) and then do some further updates client-side.

> Increasingly, the rendering happens on AWS Lambda. About 2,000 lambdas run every second to create the BBC website; a number that we expect to grow

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#5

... I'm guessing it was replaced by something a while ago now?

That's the piece of information I miss in a lot of those stories. What happened X years later? We all love reading about strange projects, but it's not until someone sits down and writes a blog post about some old, custom system that you get the important insights (X was good, Y didn't work because reasons and nobody ever understood Z).

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#6

... I'm guessing it was replaced by something a while ago now?

Looks like a mixture of React and AWS Lambda https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8673fe2a-e876-4... https://static.files.bbci.co.uk/core/storybook/index.html?pa... > The vast majority of the BBC’s webpages are rendered on AWS, using React. React’s isomorphic nature allows us to render the pages server-side (for best performance) and then do some further updates client-side. > Increasingly, the rendering happ…

I picked the first job that came up [1] and seems like at least one team is using Delphi with Oracle for the database. But the BBC isn't exactly small, so I'm not surprised there's a range.

1: https://www.totaljobs.com/job/senior-software-engineer/bbc-j...

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#7
I worked at the beeb around 2003 and built a very high traffic Perl application for Radio 1 called OneMusic to launch unsigned bands. It was interactive, not static, hit MySQL directly and blazingly fast. Was a huge success using existing libs. This was pre nginx on our public facing Apache/modperl and it handled very high traffic.

BBC did have non static Perl applications so this whole thing is a false premise. They wanted to build a framework.

In 2007 Perl had thousands of MVC frameworks in CPAN. The idea that the solution to static file hosting is to build yet another MVC framework is absurd. They did and were surprised Perl is fast. Yeah. It always was. And they reinvented the wheel.

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#8
Ruby is well known as the “bad parts of Perl” so there’s a beautiful horror here. It’s also funny that Ruby is the slowest of the dynamic languages, and that Perl is much faster. They created a magnificent mind bending nightmare.

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#9

Ruby is well known as the “bad parts of Perl” so there’s a beautiful horror here. It’s also funny that Ruby is the slowest of the dynamic languages, and that Perl is much faster. They created a magnificent mind bending nightmare.

Python is actually slower than Ruby

Re: Perl on Rails (2007)

#10
Comments are hilarious, especially knowing some of those people commenting most critically had recently been working at FM&T.

At the short stint I did at the Beeb I spent a lot of time doing code for date maths using SSI and Perl before they decided to completely rewrite what we were doing in Flash.

Perl is a great language, and Catalyst and Mojolicious are rock solid, as is DBIx::Class. I work all day with TypeScript now, but I miss working with Perl.

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