On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 03:36:40PM -0500, D-Man wrote:
>
> I agree, except for including Python in the school-marm category of
> languages. About the only thing you can't do in python (besides stomp
> over random sections of memory without first making a C extension to
> do it for you) is indent badly. My coop job right now is doing java
> work. I find it very frustrating/annoying at how much extra junk I
> have to type just to make the thing compile.
Well, you can't turn off lexical scoping, you can't make objects based on
a regexp or an array, or a filehandle, lambda functions aren't really
functions they're just expressions, so using filter() can be a real pain. You
can't call a function without (), it's often very difficult to split long
lines because newlines count...
The list goes on. However, the above are just my personal peeves, and they
don't cover the average case where you don't need any of that, so for most
tasks, Python is just fine. It's cleaner, and easier to read for the most
part. Sometimes it requires less typing than Perl, but sometimes it requires a
lot more, because it's not as succinct. But...
I find the Python debugger far more awkward to use, the lines at times
seem horribly long, there's no built-in documentation to rival POD, there's
just now being created a standard method for installing Python modules, and I
find not being able to use anonymous functions in Python annoying. I also find
regexps wordier to use in Python.
I think Python is faster though. And the Tk integration is better than
Perl's Tk module. I think Perl's TIE rocks though, and the CGI module and
HTML::Mason are amazing.
Right tool for the job people. Leave the advocacy behind. Save it for the
Vi/Emacs war. ;-)
Mike
--
Michael P. Soulier, TD12, SKY Tel: 613-765-4699 (ESN: 39-54699)
Optical Networks, Nortel Networks, SDE Pegasus
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925
Nortel Linux User's Group Ottawa: (internal) http://nlug.ca.nortel.com
