An interesting question.

My gut reaction is, "How easy is it to read the code?" I've just started investigating Drupal as a CMS, so that means getting into PHP. I've looked into the language before, and it seems simple enough, except without some of the groovy things that Perl does. I'm also looking into Python because my CTO mentioned that Red Hat is using it to build their distros. Again, the language reads like a simplified version of Perl.

Since you touched on IDEs, I did just want to say that I used an IDE from Borland to do development in C many years ago -- but I'm now familiar enough with the language that I use every day (Perl) that if I get a syntax error, I almost always know what the mistake is -- I don't need a visual reminder of where to look. More useful would be an OO debugger, although I'm currently quite happy with the Perl debugger -- that's probably just my machine language background speaking.

I 'get' OO -- but I've never used C++ or Java much; pure OO usually seems to be twisting reality to fit the language, rather than having the language do the acrobatics. Perl's OO layer is just that -- a layer, and not really built in. However, the hints I see occasionally about Perl6 suggest that it will be much more OO. That's OK -- as long as I can still get stuff done quickly and efficiently, I'll make the jump to Perl6.

Eventually.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

In reply to Re: What do you use as a language litmus? by talexb
in thread What do you use as a language litmus? by apotheon

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