An example I can think of straight off is I often find myself writing intermediate Perl scripts to munge text into a format more palatable to Java (XML works, because the Java XML APIs are quite nice). Personally, I find parsing most text formats with Perl to be much cleaner and easier than in Java. (Yes, I'm aware Java now has official regex support, but the quoting required is just nasty.)

My point wasn't that all high-level languages are exactly the same. All I was saying is that other considerations besides the strengths of the language will often be more important. Again, if you are in a 100% Java shop and you have to munge some text, writing a Perl script, while easier if you already know Perl, may still not be the optimal solution for your team as a whole.

But yes, I think there's little question that each high-level language has its own strengths and weaknesses. And while the differences are significant when abstractly comparing languages, they become less significant in the face other factors.

In reply to Re: Re: Why the Right Tool for the Job is always ... by Anonymous Monk
in thread Why the Right Tool for the Job is always ... by autarch

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