I've been programming computers for 25 years, but never as my main job. My first programming was necessary evil in my life as an engineer. Then, after slowly being seduced by the dark side, as part of my system administration chores on various platforms.
I've programmed in various assembly, FORTRAN, c, VBScript, Kixtart, ColdFusion and Perl. >From a purely language point of view and all other aspects put aside (portability, support, availability of reusable code, etc.), I much prefer Perl to VBScript. Why? It's hard to put in words, but Perl just seems to be a more natural conduit to get thoughts into code. Writing Vbscript requires you to think in VBScript. Writing in perl allows you to think in terms of the problem at hand, and the code just seems to flow from there. Things not to like about Perl? The syntax is brutal and terse. Perl programs from experienced programmers sometimes resemble line noise more than code. Perl undoubtedly has a steeper learning curve than VBScript. Learning complicated references and data structures is extremely daunting for a beginner, but unfortunately, needs to be mastered because most of the more powerful Win32 modules uses them. If you are only going to do very simple one-off scripts, you'd probably just as well stick with VBScript. For anything beyond very simple scripts, learn Perl - you won't regret it. >From an implementation point of view, Perl does have the disadvantage of not being already installed as is VBScript. However, keep in mind that you do not have to install Perl on every machine - you can run it from a UNC patch quite nicely. Install Perl and associated modules on one machine, share the Perl folder, and run from everywhere else as \\PerlMachine\Perl\bin\perl script.pl. We've taken that one step further and installed perl in the netlogon folder of one of our DCs so that automatically replicates to all the others. From our logon scripts we call perl like this: %0\..\perl\bin\perl %0\..\whatever.pl This way, remote users pull perl.exe of their local DC instead of over the WAN. Works great. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roger Seielstad Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 10:37 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] What is your favorite scripting language? Its got a lot of, well, interesting features to it, and it supports some object types that aren't available in VBScript. And its cross platform, which makes it handy to know. -------------------------------------------------------------- Roger D. Seielstad - MTS MCSE MS-MVP Sr. Systems Administrator Inovis Inc. > -----Original Message----- > From: Rich Milburn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 10:29 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] What is your favorite scripting language? > > > I'm afraid to ask... but... why is Perl the preferred > language (besides "it > works on Unix/Linux")? > > Rich > > -----Original Message----- > From: Joe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 10:13 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] What is your favorite scripting language? > > But I did.... :oP > > joe > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robbie Allen > (rallen) > Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 8:52 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [ActiveDir] What is your favorite scripting language? > > O'Reilly is hosting a poll for the most popular scripting > language on the > Windows platform. To vote for your favorite language, visit > the O'Reilly > website (http://www.oreilly.com/) and look on the right side > of the page > under O'Reilly Poll. > > FYI, Perl has the early lead and no I didn't vote twice :-) > > Regards, > Robbie Allen > http://www.rallenhome.com/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%> 40mail.activedir.org/ > > > List info : > http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%> 40mail.activedir.org/ > > -------APPLEBEE'S INTERNATIONAL, INC. > CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE------- > PRIVILEGED / CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION may be contained in > this message or > any attachments. This information is strictly confidential and may be > subject to attorney-client privilege. This message is > intended only for the > use of the named addressee. 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