Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?

[Paul Prescod]

"David J. Ritchie" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> In any case, I am reluctant to drag everyone through my imperfect
> programming practices as useful as I find them....my main point was that
> if context sensitivity is considered to be a difficulty in understandability
> in programming languages (of which Perl has some) then (in the spirit
> of being able to argue both sides of the question as a way of proving
> that one has thought through the issues), it seems that Python has a
> context sensitivity difficulty in the area of the treatment of tabs
> as identifying blocks of code.

I find it a stretch to treat these situations as analogous. In the one
case we are talking about a difficulty in understanding and reading code
caused by the same syntax meaning different things in different
contexts. That's context sensitivity. In another case we're talking
about difficulty cutting and pasting in some text editors. Of course the
code you paste will be "sensitive to its context" but that's the whole
point of cutting and pasting. You want it to pick up a new context and
be sensitive to it.

 Paul Prescod