Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?

[Alex Martelli]

Cameron Laird wrote:
        ...
> number of engineers seem to have big emotional
> reactions to syntactic differences that are
> superficial in any language-theoretic sense:
> significant white-space, variable markers,

Sorry, but I cannot agree that "variable markers" (stropping of names to 
indicate role) is "superficial in any language-theoretic sense".  In 
Python, any name (simple or compound) can refer to any kind of object, and 
knowing about such 'kind' issues is the role of the object (not of the 
name, not of the compiler, not necessarily of the programmer).  This IS a 
deep difference wrt a language where the programmer must annotate (e.g., 
strop) names to tell the compiler about what kind of object they "contain"
(or "refer to", but Perl has value-semantics as its basis, not reference
semantics like Python), explicitly annotate referencing and dereferencing
as well, and so on.

It may or may not be worth superficially learning both Perl and Python 
before going in depth into either (if it is, then I think Ruby should also 
be in the mix).  But "variable markers" are still quite a deep difference.


Alex