As Doug Dineley and I were discussing my draft review of Curl last week, now posted here, he asked me a serious question:

You essentially recommend readers to give Curl a try. Is there a way to tell who is the best kind of match for this product? I mean, what sort of developer, in general, trying to meet what sort of need?

My answer about the need being addressed made into the final review. On the other issue, I responded:

The sticking point for a lot of developers is that the Curl language is different from what they already know.

In the early 1980s I ran a software development, publishing and sales business focused on engineering and scientific applications. One of the products we resold was Asyst, which was based on Forth. (There are still companies doing business under that name, but I doubt that any of them are related to the one that produced this product.)

After handling many returns of Asyst, I told the sales staff to ask the customer what kind of calculator he or she used, as a screening mechanism: if the answer was TI, then Asyst probably wasn’t for them, but if the answer was HP, then they’d probably be able to learn Asyst because they already knew Reverse Polish Notation.

I haven’t found a similar touchstone for Curl, but then again I’m not trying to sell it. I’m fairly sure that anyone who has learned Lisp, Scheme, Smalltalk or Logo will pick up Curl very easily; most people who have learned OOD/OOP in any language will be able to pick up Curl without encountering any serious barriers.

Since it’s a free product for evaluation purposes, however, the simplest way to tell if you’re going to like Curl is to try it.

So there you have it.

Posted by Martin Heller on April 7, 2008 06:51 AM