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

[Roy Smith]

claird at lairds.com (Cameron Laird) wrote:
> 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 know about that.  What Tcl lacks in power and expressiveness, it 
makes up for in simplicity of use, quick learning curve, and ease of 
embedding/extending.  I've written a lot of Tcl code, and never used 
either Expect or Tk.  I think Tcl fills a valid niche, especially for 
small embedded applications.

I'll go further than that; I think everybody who considers themselves a 
professional programmer should learn Tcl.  Even if you never use it in 
anger, it's interesting and useful to explore different corners of the 
"language design concept" space.  For the same reason, I think people 
should learn postscript, and try writing some real programs in it (no, 
it's not just a printer language).

It's important to keep learning new stuff, and to recognize that however 
great your favorite tool d'jour is, there's going to be something better 
coming along in the future.  Perl was invented because the mammoth 
shell/awk/sed/grep scripts of the day were getting unmanageable, and 
gained such popularity because it was better than the alternatives.  
Inertia, and lack of real competition has kept it alive for 20 years, 
but it's clear that better things have come along.

By the same token, while Python is in its ascendancy, it's foolish to 
think nothing better will come along.  It might be one of the Python 
outgrowths like the brand-new Prothon, or a current competitor like 
Ruby, or something even more afield like D, or something not yet 
invented.  But it'll happen.

My advice is to celebrate the joy that Python gives us today (just like 
Unix sysadmins celebrated Perl's introduction 20 years ago), but keep 
trying new things too.  5 years ago, Pythonistas (was the term even 
invented then?) were crazy rebels.  Today, they're the fashionable avant 
garde.  5 years from now, they'll be comfortably mainstream.  10 years 
from now, they'll be old-fashioned.  And 20 years from now, they'll be 
dinosaurs.  Don't let yourself become a dinosaur.