Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?

[Alex Martelli]

Patrick W wrote:
        ...
> I *was* thinking that there are many situations in which Python is too
> slow and C is needlessly tedious. If that were true, a mid-level
> language in which you don't have to roll your own simple data
> structures or worry about memory management and still get good
> performance would be a good thing. But in practice, have I ever
> *needed* such a thing? No.

In my experience I've often found myself in such a situation -- and
Numeric proved to be exactly the "mid-level language" I needed in
most of those cases.  You may not think of Numeric as "a language",
but it covers a wide-enough "niche" after all.  SQL (and _there_ the
'L' does stand for 'language'!-) may be seen in a similar light,
although 'mid-level' sounds strange when applied to it:-).

If such needs arise for flexible array manipulation, and for bulk
data manipulation in a relational model, they may no doubt arise in
other sub-fields, too.  Often special-purpose extensions that one
may or may not think of as "a language" may meet the need best, as
in the case of Numeric; at other times, the ability to connect with
an 'actual lagnauge' with very different strengths and weaknesses
(much as one does with SQL) may provide useful synergies.

> It would be nice if Python could become a first-class producer or
> consumer of .NET components, regardless of which language they're
> written in.

Yes, when .NET becomes widespread enough, it _would_ be nice to be
ready for it, one way or another.  Which way is still anything but
clear to me, though.


Alex