convince me

[Jonathan Hogg]

On 5/8/2002 14:17, in article
1ea8e146.0208050517.79c8834f at posting.google.com, "Kyle Babich" <kb at mm.st>
wrote:

> I started learning perl but more recently I found python.  Both look
> to have their advantages, so I'm having a hard time picking one to
> stick with and persue.  I have seen arguments that python has cleaner
> syntax, is gaining in popularity, with excellent documentation, and is
> better for group projects, which is all fairly obvious.  But (from a
> _neutral_ standpoint I am asking) what can python do that perl can't?

You're unlikely to find a "neutral standpoint" here ;-), and very unlikely
to find a language that can do something another can't. Thanks to Turing, we
can be fairly sure that all programming languages are equivalent in terms of
what they can do. The question simply comes down to how hard it is to
express what you want to do.

You've already given three good reasons for going with Python. Think of the
things that are important to you (such as speed, size, development cost,
maintenance cost, etc.) and then evaluate the different languages you're
considering with respect to those things.

If you have specific questions, we'll be able to answer them, but we can't
tell you what's good for you... [1]

Jonathan


[1] Though many are about to try ;-)