On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 11:19:39AM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> During the beginner Perl classes I teach people often ask me why is Perl
> better than .... X ?
>
> where X is one of their favorite languages, in the case of my classes
> it is usuall C or UNIX shell but I guess other people would ask about
> other languages.
I teach Perl classes too. If people ask me such a question, I usually
respond with something along the lines of:
"Perl isn't better than X. It's *different*. Many people prefer
Perl over X. Many prefer X over Perl. Perl isn't for everyone;
in fact, many people programming Perl would be better off using
another language. It cannot do more than X can, nor can X do more
than Perl. It's up to *you* to decide what is better for *you*."
I do however every now and then say 'try doing this in C/Java' after
showing a neat construct.
But more often I say "this works this way in Perl because it works
this way in C".
Abigail
