A little disappointed so far

[Alex Martelli]

andrew cooke wrote:

> Graham Nicholls <graham at rockcons.co.uk> writes:
> [...]
>> 2. Its all just so long winded, especially as a shelltool.  I (really)
>> _hate_ to say it, but perl seems so much easier, and more practical.  I
>> am not a huge fan of perl, because of its inbuilt "obfuscability", but I
>> can
> [...]
> 
> i agree completely, but then i don't use python for little things that
> i can do in perl - what's the point?  python is better for things that
> take more than 5 lines, thing i know other people will use, or things
> i need to read and understand in a year's time.

I guess the reason I did once rewrite every Perl script I had around in
Python boils down to a disagreement on the last point: after decades of
experience, I *KNOW* that I can't predict in advance what it IS, out of
the "intended to be one-use-then-throw-away" scripts I write, that I WILL
need to read and understand in a year's time.  Therefore I write all the
scripts in Python and live happily ever after.  And why not?  Who could
possibly care if 4 lines of code become 6 or so?  It's gonna take up a
disk block (512 bytes at least) anyway, isn't it?  So why should I take
the trouble to remain current in more than one scripting language, when
doing all my non-interactive scripting in Python (and a tiny subset of
bash for interactive stuff) lets me use my scarce neurons better?-)


> use the right tool for the job - perl and python are different.

They're different, but speaking as an ex-heavy-user of Perl I cannot
currently identify ANY niche where I'd rather use Perl.


Alex