perl to python

[Kirk Job-Sluder]

On 2004-05-12, Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnca3t0e.2asc.kirk at eyegor.jobsluder.net>,
> Kirk Job-Sluder  <kirk at eyegor.jobsluder.net> wrote:
>>
>>And here is the fundamental question.  Why should I spend my time
>>writing a module in python to emulate another tool, when I can simply
>>use that other tool?  Why should I, as a resarcher who must process
>>large quantities of data, spend my time and my employer's money
>>reinventing the wheel?  
>
> Why should your employer pay for the time for all of its employees to
> learn all of those other tools, when Python will do the job?  

As was brought up earlier.  Creating custom python scripts to reinvent
the wheel is also loaded with training costs.  I would argue the
following:

1:  Using an existing idiomatic tool takes advantage of standardization.
"perl -pi -e" exhibits the same behavior on multiple platforms and even
different versions of perl.  It is an idiomatic expression that is very
well documented, and for which 100s of examples through a quick google
search.

2:  Memorizing two lines is more difficult than memorizing one line.

3:  The alternative proposal, writing a site-specific module is even
worse when it comes to training requirements.

Or to turn this around, why should anybody learn to use tar, find, less,
rsync or diff when you can do the same thing in python?