Punkish, I fully understand your situation and seemingly many others in this forum do. I am a scientist and migrated from FORTRAN to Perl some years ago. I use Perl for almost everything from rearranging text files to even some heavy calculations, the latter almost exclusively with PDL. My work involves lots of cartography and geographic calculations (coordinates and so on). In my opinion, and without getting into useless comparisons with other languages, Perl offers an amazing variety of modules and programming structures that greatly facilitate scientific work in almost any aspect. Of course, this is only once you get used to the language, but this applies to any other language or tool, isn't it?

In my opinion, your despair has to do with the fact that it is always difficult, and sometimes futile, to combat misconceptions fixed in some people's minds. The biggest enemy of scientists is not ignorance, but narrow-mindedness. So, do not loose time and energy with those that are closed in their beliefs (this might also apply to other aspects of life).

Go on with Perl, your example, if good, will suffice to show others the power of the camel!

In reply to Re: Perl for science by hda
in thread Perl for science by punkish

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