On Oct 2, 2008, at 6:21 PM, Steve Cayford wrote: > 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 have to agree with Steve's disagreement. The one solid example I have is a local company, Digital River, whom I *know* uses Perl on most of their new stuff. But, I'm by no means an expert in this area. --- Eric Crist