Python versus Perl ?

[moma]

Reinhold Birkenfeld wrote:
> surfunbear at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
>> I've read some posts on Perl versus Python and studied a bit of my
>>Python book.
>>
>> I'm a software engineer, familiar with C++ objected oriented
>>development, but have been using Perl because it is great for pattern
>>matching, text processing, and automated testing. Our company is really
>>fixated on risk managnemt and the only way I can do enough testing
>>without working overtime (which some people have ended up doing) is by
>>automating my testing. That's what got me started on Perl.
>>
>> I've read that many people prefer Python and that it is better than
>>Perl. However, I want to ask a few other questions.
> 
> 
> "Better than Perl" is a very general statement. In my personal opinion,
> this is true for every project being larger than one file of ~200 LOC.
> 
> 
>>1. Perl seems to have alot of packaged utilities available through
>>CPAN, the comprehensive perl network. These can aid in building
>>parsers, web development, perl DBI is heavily used. This seems to be a
>>very important benifit. I'm not sure that Python is as extenive at all
>>in that regard ?
> 
> 
> There are the Python Package Index (PyPI), the Vaults of Parnassus, and
> when you don't find a needed package there, just come and ask here;
> almost always a decent solution is found.
> 
> A thing similar to CPAN is being worked on by various people, though I
> don't know when it will become mature.
> 
> 
>>Perl also has excellent pattern matching compared to
>>sed, not sure about how Python measures up,
>> but this seems to make perl ideally suited to text processing.
> 
> 
> Python has regular expressions much like Perl. The only difference is
> that Perl carries syntactic support for them, while in Python regular
> expressions are ordinary objects with methods etc.
> 
> 
>>2. Python is apparantly better at object oriented. Perl has some kind
>>of name spacing, I have used that in a limited way. Does Perl use a
>>cheap and less than optimal Object oriented approach ?
>>That was what someone at work said, he advocates Python.
>>Is it likely that Perl will improve it's object oriented features
>>in the next few years ?
> 
> 
> There is the Perl 6 movement, but when you read some of the docs at
> http://dev.perl.org, you will come to the conclusion that
> 
> - Perl 6 lies at least 3-5 years in the future and
> - it will be a huge mess. Someone here once said "Perl 6 is the ultimate
> failure of Perl's philosophy". There may be split views about this...
> 
> 
>>3. Perl is installed on our system and alot of other systems.
>>You don't have to make sys admins go out of there way to make it
>>available. It's usualy allready there.
> 
> 
> Same goes with Python; it is installed per default on most modern
> Unices. Windows is a completely different chapter, however, Perl isn't
> more widespread there.
> 
> 
>>I also did a search of job
>>postings on a popular website. 108 jobs where listed that require
>>knowledge of Perl, only 17 listed required Python. Becomeing more
>>familiar with Perl might then be usefull for ones resume ?
> 
> 
> It doesn't harm, of course. Recent statistics about programmers'
> salaries indicate, however, that Python ranks top (I somehow lost the URL).
> 
> 
>>If Python is better than Perl, I'm curious how really significant
>>those advantages are ?
> 
> 
> Try to decide yourself. The Python tutorial and website are your friends.
> Reinhold


I like Ruby because it inherits so many (best) features from Python and 
Perl ;)  Someday all these languages will compile to a common 
intermediate representation (ref. YAML: http://yaml.kwiki.org  || 
http://yaml.org )

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79533

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/kd/courses/pythonruby.pdf

http://www.ntecs.de/old-hp/s-direktnet/rb/download_ruby.html

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/


// moma