Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 23:01:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: what language should i learn next ? Message-ID: <14776.25741.94379.452631@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <122196276@toto.iv>
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> my personal suggestion, if you pick only one, would be perl, if only because > its useful for a lot of different interesting things worth learning about... > in addition to "normal programs" its well suited for shell-script-type > programs, you can build gui's with tk, and if you're interested in web stuff > you can use mod_perl with apache. it's not too hard to plug in a database > like mySQL, either. there's also a vast library of code and add-on modules > (CPAN) for all kinds of stuff - email, image processing, etc, etc. Since no one else put in a word about it.... Every word of this applies to Python as well (ok, CPAN doesn't have Python code, but there is a very large library available). Perl has a very esoteric syntax, in may ways similar comparable to teco and sendmail.cf. Python has an eccentric syntax - whitespace *matters*. Some people hate one, some hate the other, and some hate both - or neither. Perl has been (rightly) called "The Swiss Army Chain Saw" of languages, with "There's more than one way to do it" inscribed on the cover of the book. Perl has grown functionality by adding features. Python is more the opposite; functionality is added by removing restrictions. In particular, Python Objects are omniscient and omnipotent. Whereas Perl has regular expressions as a language type, Python has them as object. This makes them easier to use in Perl, but easier to extend in Python. The end result of all this is that Perl is easier to use for very quick scripts - you can't turn around in Python without having to import modules and use attribute references. Python provides a bit better support for large projects, as there are fewer things to deal with that aren't objects, making them easier to reuse. Personally, I'd agree that knowing as many different languages as you can is good. I'm going to investigate ruby sometime soon. Thanx, <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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