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Re^2: Why Perl?

by Preceptor (Deacon)
on Jul 18, 2013 at 12:33 UTC ( [id://1045085]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Why Perl?
in thread Why Perl?

Yes, Python is a good scripting language. What point are you trying to make though? Would you assert it's a _better_ choice?

My personal taste isn't a reason to make other people use it, no. But my knowledge of it means it's something I can teach them how to use, when I can't of something I'm _not_ familiar with.

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Re^3: Why Perl?
by elTriberium (Friar) on Jul 18, 2013 at 20:27 UTC

    In environments like the one that you're describing my main reason for preferring Perl over Python is that typically more people are already basically familiar with Perl. If you want someone to start programming full time then Python is a good choice, but people who just want to automate a small piece of their daily work or move some simple shell scripts into something slightly more advanced usually can make faster progress with Perl.

    One of the reasons behind that I think is that Perl is closer to C. So in companies where the main code base is C that is a big plus point for Perl.

    That's just my opinion, though, maybe in other organisations that looks completely different.

Re^3: Why Perl?
by DrHyde (Prior) on Jul 22, 2013 at 10:58 UTC
    What point are you trying to make though?

    My point is that the OP's list of reasons "why perl" aren't very good reasons, because they mostly don't separate perl from the herd of other languages. "It's what I know and so it's what I can teach" is, however, an excellent reason for teaching in perl, provided that the desired end point isn't "the students know perl" but "the students know a dynamic language" or something like that.

    They can then use their new knowledge of programming (gained via the medium of perl) in whatever similar language they find is most appropriate for the task at hand. IME the choice of which language is most appropriate is hardly ever determined by technical or linguistic matters, but by what your colleagues are most familiar with and what they've already got code written in. Taking my current job and task as an example, the best language from a technical PoV would probably be something like SML or Haskell, because I'm constantly getting my arse kicked by data type problems. But the rest of the application has already been written in perl, by perl programmers, so the best language from the social PoV (which is more important than the technical PoV) is perl.

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