Is Perl *that* good? (was: How's ruby compare to it older bro

[Cameron Laird]

In article <lNadndrvs_FarRDdRVn-vA at powergate.ca>,
Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>I guess it would be interesting to pose the question back to
>them "If you could not use regexes in Perl, would you still
>like to program in it?" or "If you couldn't use mysql in PHP
>would you still use it?"
>
>What similar question, if any, would be a difficult one for
>us Python types?
>
>-Peter

Over in Perlmark, Randal "often" (his adverb) claims
no one'd use Tcl now if Expect and Tk hadn't kept it
alive.

I don't get it, though.  The questions just don't work
for me; I don't find them as illuminating as more pre-
cise and less inflammatory alternatives.  Moreover, 
I'm sure I could find abundant Perlites who'd still 
use it without its built-in REs.

If Python lacked the interactive shell ... well, 
someone would build it, immediately.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at phaseit.net>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net