Re^2: Perl holds its own against Python Ruby et al

I'm only vaguely familiar with Python; what about it makes it increasingly popular?

Some non-technical, "political" reasons I can think of are:

Google apparently prefer Python to Perl as a development language. The Google App Engine currently only supports Python. They also hired Guido van Rossum and Alex Martelli.
Microsoft seem more interested in Python than Perl as a .NET language.
High profile Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth supports Python and apparently wants to move towards making Python the de-facto programming language on the Ubuntu Linux desktop.
The one laptop per child project chose Python.

Update (2023): Now that Guido has left Google for Microsoft will we see Python adoption rising at Microsoft and falling at Google?

Comment on Re^2: Perl holds its own against Python Ruby et al

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Re^3: Perl holds its own against Python Ruby et al by ack (Deacon) on Mar 12, 2008 at 06:09 UTC
So what's making Perl decline? Ship-jumpers, bad press (e.g., press that compares Python to Perl and asserts that Python is better)? Gavin's "political" reasons definitely would suggest a lot of power...sufficient to drive the changes, IMO. I'm still curious about the language reasons(i.e., technical reasons) from the Monk's who are more versed in Python that I am. I tried to learn it about 2 years ago...but got bored and kept wanting to get back to my beloved Perl. I'm definitely settling into the 'old dog' stage of my career (and life, probably). ack Albuquerque, NM	[reply]
Re^4: Perl holds its own against Python Ruby et al by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Mar 12, 2008 at 11:43 UTC
In my first response, I deliberately stayed away from any technical comparisons because they can easily degenerate into subjective personal preference: "Perl looks like line noise", "I hate the Python whitespace rules", and so on. Often such statements are made by programmers who know one language much better than the other. Especially irritating is the claim by people who hardly know Perl that it's "unreadable" -- to which, I normally reply that Russian is "unreadable" if you don't know Russian. Anyway, my subjective opinion, FWIW. Perl, Python and Ruby can be used to accomplish the same sort of tasks. I've used all three and found all three to be a delight to use. They all have their warts, of course, and a differing set of strengths and weaknesses. For fun, I created a couple of nodes (Five Ways to Reverse a String of Words (C#, Perl 5, Perl 6, Ruby, Haskell) and Yet Another Rosetta Code Problem (Perl, Ruby, Python, Haskell, ...)) showing the same program written in various languages. I genuinely like Perl, Python and Ruby, so I don't really want to comment further. To hear other folk's opinions, you could always google for "Perl versus Python" -- there's certainly no shortage of opinions out there. :-)	[reply]
Re^5: Perl holds its own against Python Ruby et al by ack (Deacon) on Mar 13, 2008 at 04:05 UTC
I like your comments and respect your position. I remember your earlier comments that you referred to here. Quite frankly, I agree with you with respect to the difficulty (and probably the futility) of trying to compare the two (or more) languages. My brief interlude with Python was not bad...I just kept thinking about how Perl does things and found that my satisfaction with Perl left me without much committment to "learn a new language." It truely had nothing to do with Python...in fact what little time I spent with Python revealed some pretty neat features. Your analogy to trying to pick a best human spoken language is most insightful. Thanks for your reply. I will definitely do a little web-browsing to see some of the comparisons. At the end of the day, as many others noted in their various replies, I am satisfied with Perl...it does what I need...so, for me, that trumps pretty much any issue that could possibly come out of any "which language is best" discussion thread. I truely appreciate your wisdom. ack Albuquerque, NM	[reply]