Re: Honest question about Perl, Python and Ruby

I'm puzzled by what you hope to learn from the answers?

I prefer Perl. I just can't get on with the significant whitespace and hanging indents of Python. Ruby seemed okay; but didn't seem to offer anything special over Perl.

Since I knew Perl first; when I needed to get something done, it was easier and quicker to reach for the tool I knew than work out how to do it in one of the other two.

And when I set out to learn Ruby -- Python was kicked into touch almost immediately -- I just found nothing that made it significantly better than Perl; and much that seemed awkward (or even, impossible without lots of extra effort) by comparison.

Perhaps if I'd learnt one of the other two first my story would be different. (Though i seriously doubt I could have ever learned to like Python.)

But quite how any of that helps you, I simply do not see?

Try them all; pick the one you like best; or whichever seems to give you the best career opportunities.

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I'm with torvalds on this

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. Agile (and TDD) debunked

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Re^2: Honest question about Perl, Python and Ruby by bitingduck (Deacon) on Feb 10, 2015 at 05:48 UTC
Ruby seemed okay; but didn't seem to offer anything special over Perl. I learned Perl and Ruby at about the same time maybe 12 years ago because I had a problem that I wanted to solve and was poking around at what tools would get me going fastest. There were some useful Perl tools, so I started with that, then tried both Rails and Catalyst and kept getting hung up on getting Catalyst to install, while Rails was painless at the time. I have no idea how they compare today. At the time, I also thought that Ruby had a slightly cleaner object syntax (as a relative beginner at OO languages). Now I honestly don't even notice whether I'm using an OO interface to a Perl module vs a functional- I look through the docs and call things however they want to be called. The language has a lot of flexibility and I tend to just roll with it.	[reply]

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Re^2: Honest question about Perl, Python and Ruby
by bitingduck (Deacon) on Feb 10, 2015 at 05:48 UTC

Ruby seemed okay; but didn't seem to offer anything special over Perl.

I learned Perl and Ruby at about the same time maybe 12 years ago because I had a problem that I wanted to solve and was poking around at what tools would get me going fastest. There were some useful Perl tools, so I started with that, then tried both Rails and Catalyst and kept getting hung up on getting Catalyst to install, while Rails was painless at the time. I have no idea how they compare today.

At the time, I also thought that Ruby had a slightly cleaner object syntax (as a relative beginner at OO languages). Now I honestly don't even notice whether I'm using an OO interface to a Perl module vs a functional- I look through the docs and call things however they want to be called. The language has a lot of flexibility and I tend to just roll with it.

[reply]