Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?

[Terry Reedy]

Hi James,

Thanks for the report from current real-time computing battlefronts.
My only direct real-time experience was writing an analysis program
for radiation counts that arrived in batches of three once a minute.
I wrote in Basic for a Kaypro connected by a 300/1200 baud serial
line.  Worked fine.  But I understand that things now are often (but
not always) quite different.


Peter's concern about myth-mongering comes from the following type of
exchange:

Newcomer Troll:  Ha ha.  I just ran a comparative test and Python is
WAAAY slow.

Pythoneer:  Can you give us some details?

NT:  Yeah.  My turbo-lang version took 1/100 second and Python took a
*whole* second -- 100 times slower.

Py:  How often will you run this program?

NT: One or twice a day.

--------

The point which underlies Python but which excapes some is that faster
and faster CPUs change the ratio between programmer cost and CPU cost
in favor of using more CPU cycles.  All most of us want is that people
evaluate the tradeoff with current figures instead of data and habits
of thought developed two or three decades ago (which some of us had to
shed before being comfortable with Python ourselves).

-- And yes, there will *always* be new or extended leading edge
applications that will sop up every cycle available.  For them, the
only use for Python is (maybe) as a prototyping language for exploring
alternative algorithms.

Terry J. Reedy