Dan Rue wrote: > On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 02:45:08PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote: >> OK, but how does Python compare with Perl and Ruby? They don't have >> interactive shells? Are there other major differences. > > Imho, you should learn a little bit of all three so you have a bit of > context for the differences. That said, > > I wouldn't bother with perl unless there's a legacy codebase you are > interested in. They haven't released a new major version in some 10 > years, and I don't think very many people choose it for *new* projects. > It does still have a foothold in the sys admin's tool belt and is > ubiquitous in server environments, but as a language it's frequently > discounted now days for anything beyond glorified shell scripts. Still > worth knowing at least superficially because you will run into it. > I agree with your first paragraph, but the second one is completely bogus. Perl 5.10 just came out last December and both Perl 5 and Perl 6 are under continuing development. Perl's heavily used in a lot of large organizations and CPAN is huge and still growing. I think programmers are unduly affected by ideas of what's in fashion. It's like we're worried that someone's going to say "oh, you still write in x? How quaint." I like Perl. It's powerful; it offers a lot of flexibility; it's written by a group of very creative developers; and I actually find it quite readable (except for the intentionally obfuscated programs). I'd recommend the Perl Best Practices book, though, if you're going to write something large. I'm sure Ruby and Python are also very good. I don't have enough experience to comment on them though. -Steve