Why should I switch to Python?

[Nick Maclaren]

In article <38E7967E.DE18EFA5 at bellatlantic.net>, Steve Holden <sholden at bellatlantic.net> writes:
|> 
|> Perl's avowed intention that everything which *might* mean something in
|> the language *should* mean something makes the odds much higher that an
|> incorrect program won't be caught until execution.  This means that for
|> a learner much more time has to be spent testing code to find out just
|> how Perl interprets what *has* to be regarded as a pretty grotty syntax.

What makes you think that it would be caught then?

The first Perl program I wrote was 20-30 lines long and, as is my
wont, I tested every single branch and boundary value.  Everything
finally worked.  I then tried it on real data, and it gave wrong
answers, quietly.

I had misunderstood the syntax description and written incorrect
syntax that just happened to behave in the same way as the correct
syntax on all my tests.  You may be able to guess why I don't
trust Perl for anything critical.

Oh, and by the way, I was the guy who got Perl 4 going under MVS,
and have ported Perl 5 to Unix a couple of times.  I may make rude
remarks about the quality of the C and its design in Python, but
it is wonderful compared to that in Perl.  It is a miracle Perl
works at all.

I am learning Python because I need a scripting language that is
much more flexible and reliable and less feature-ridden than Bourne
shell - I could stick with C, of course, but it is very tedious
even for an old Assembler hacker like me.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email:  nmm1 at cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679