: > Can you please explain to me advantages of Python in comparison
: > with PERL?
:
: Uh oh, here comes a religious war :-)
Well I hope on this list, you are preaching to the converted.
My experiences:
Last year I thought it was time to learn more than just static web page
design and hoped to learn a little about web programming. Someone told
me about Perl so I started there. After about six months I was still
struggling. I thought it was me, that I just real rusty when it came to
programming. In the beginning as I read through the basic perl
material, it seemed easy enough but there was just too much information
that I needed to know just to pull of a basic script.
Another gripe I had was that I never could find any help. No matter how
detailed my questions were or how much "homework" I did, I always was
either ignored or told to RTF.
I never felt comfortable with Perl, always have to look up some syntax
or another. Then I tried Object Oriented Perl and then I lost it. I
took the advice of a friend and looked into Python. Python was a like a
breath of fresh air. At first I posted on Usenet some of my concerns
and questions about migratting to python from perl -- questions about
syntax, object orientness, and community. Dozens of people came out of
the wood work to help. I was pointed in the direction of the tutorial
and the compiler. I worked through the tutorial and in about an hour, I
learned enough of python to get to the same level I was after six months
of perl.
The community around python is superior to perl as I also learned. I've
never been given a short answer. The [EMAIL PROTECTED] is just the
mailing list I needed for perl but never got. If a question I asked
could be answered in information available on the web, that was pointed
out but they still explained and answered the question and sometimes
with information not available elsewhere.
Plus the syntax, compiler, and references/help information is so good
and thorough, I've not had to buy that much in extra materials. With
perl I bought about 6 books of various topics including the camel book
and a book on object oriented perl. With python I didn't need to do
any of that. Python comes with a comprehensive tutorial and reference
documentation. I've only bought two books for Python, the Essential
Reference which wasn't necessary really since its already available
online but I got it for portability and Python Programming on Win32
which looks interesting but I haven't really gotten into yet due to time
constraints (Mark, one of these days I will. *s*)
I guess I should say a few nice things about Perl. If you need to do
extensive Regular Expressions (on the order of hundreds) then probably
Perl is the way to go -- but on the other hand I believe that there are
python modules to work with perl so you go that right I think.
Basically if you read, eat and sleep perl code or if you are completely
comfortable with the ins and outs of perl then you may not need to make
the transition. If you, like me, have trouble with certain aspects of
perl then give python a good look -- you may be pleasantly suprised.
Hope this helps,
Joel
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