Python for Perl programmers

[John J. Lee]

aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

> John J. Lee <jjl at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> > "A.M" <alanalan at newsgroup.nospam> writes:
> > 
> > > Is there any efficient online resource or book that help experienced Perl
> > > programmers to Python?
> > 
> > Worry instead about how you're going to keep maintaining your Perl
> > code after you've developed an allergic response to it.
> 
> Nah, that's easy -- you port it to Python (that's what I did back in the
> day, and I've heard at least three others relate similar choices).

Or, in my case, throwing away the Perl I had because I found I had
written something much more useful in Python.

A little bit of experience on a smallish (or largish!) from-scratch
Python project does of course make a difference: Perl and Python are
sufficiently close in many things that it's easy to get tunnel vision
when porting Perl to Python.  A little knowledge of Python idioms,
techniques, standard library modules, etc., gained outside of that
narrow context, goes a long way to prevent that.

OTOH, the often-mechanical nature of porting .pl->.py, and the great
flexibility of both languages, does certainly make it easier to
switch.


John