Yes, I know this is not a place to rant, nor is this place to talk bad about other languages, but heck, I am going to rant anyways....

So I started my scripting journey (short and irregular) with Perl. It enabled me to write scripts pretty fast with least knowledge of the language in particular and programming in general. Job requirements made me take a long break from Perl and Scripting. I started learning Python, not because I had to write scripts, but to "check mark" a training requirement. It's a good language, nothing against it. I was happy on the learning journey, until a requirement came up to automate some alerts and that is when my troubles started.

The client for which I was to do the automation has strict internet access policies, so no access to the internet from the servers used for environment management. Also, no admin access. I had promised to automate some stuff (my bad, I should have first checked the requirements). Python would not install, not even within the directories for my account. I was at wit's end. I tried downloading again thinking may be the file got corrupted, but same result. My colleague managed to install it for his servers (different client) but kept getting errors while trying to send out emails. So we both were kind of upset and pissed off.

And then I remembered, Strawberry Perl. Downloaded it, pushed the installer to the servers (Yes, I again had to raise a request for that as well, and no they would not allow any special permissions). To my amazement, it installed without any errors!!. And every conceivable module I wanted was there!!

This was two days ago...just now finished writing the scripts, sent a test email to myself, then sent it to the required DL Email. Informed my manager and the concerned client folks and they were all happy!!

Now for my colleague, he too installed the same, I helped him out with the scripts, and I dunnowhathappened, but the emails just worked with Perl. Yeah this sounds stupid, but it didnt work with Python, but , it worked with Perl!!

Also I found that, for Perl, there are two kind of Email Modules, Ones that "create"/"format" Email and the others you use to "send" emails. Some modules may have both, and I could be wrong, but what I really liked is the modularity given here.

May be I did something wrong while trying to install Python, may be not, I am not sure. May be I was stupid. But, end of the day, it was Perl that saved the day.

So thank you Perl, Thank you Perl Developers and especially Strawberry Perl Team for saving the day.

Rant Over.