[ale] James Gosling will be speaking at the Sept.AJUG meeting]

[Charles Shapiro]

Umm.  I wrote a bunch of perl for both work and play, then got this gig
where python is the Official Scripting Language. Python is my current
language of choice for recreational coding as well for work. I'd rather not
get into a language war here, but I'll not go back to perl unless someone
nearby pays me. The OP was right that perl has better community support. But
python also has community support -- check out the Python Cheeseshop (
http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi ) for example.  Of course, for learning
Good Coding Style, community support may be less critical than for getting
something working on a deadline.

I find it a easier to write code I consider elegant and comprehensible in
python than I do in perl, and I have a a reasonable  amount of experience in
perl.  Working code samples of mine are available for both languages: the
fraudulator ( http://tomshiro.org/fraudulator/ ) is written in perl, and the
sudoku grinder ( http://tomshiro.org/sudoku-grinder/ ) is in python. So if
you wish you can make your own comparisions -- as well as pointing and
laughing at my "WTF"-style coding if you wish. NB that these comments apply
to perl 5 only -- I haven't worked at all with perl 6.

The canonical Big Python Project is zope ( http://www.zope.org ), a web
application server which is very easy to use but  has been accused of
scaling troubles. Other projects I'm aware of in this space include Cherrypy
( http://www.cherrypy.org/ ) and django ( http://www.djangoproject.com/ ).
You can of course google "big python projects" as well as I can. There're
plenty of them out there it appears.

And hey, if you're gonna write C++., you should read Bjarne Stroustroup's
_The_Design_and_Evolution_of_C++ . It's a surprisingly entertaining as well
as deep look at the design issues Stroustroup faced from the Man Himself.

-- CHS


On 8/31/06, Christopher Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com> wrote:
>
> I believe KDE and GNOME are both written in C++ and they are large
> projects.
>
> I think it is good that schools are now teaching stuff like scripting
> languages vs Cobol.  I ask why the choice of Python?  Maybe because it
> has a strong focus in OOP.  It seems that Perl would give you more bang
> for the buck in terms of languages to program in.  They are both
> excellent choices.  I believe Perl has better community support which
> would lend itself to a good choice in almost any project.  I'll put it
> this way, there has not been a time when I thought that Perl could not
> do what I needed and I thought about using something else.  I've done
> some unique things with Perl so far.
>
>
> On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 00:28 -0400, Steve Brown wrote:
> >
> > From: Christopher Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com>
> > >Another method is looking at source code.  Look at OSS projects.
> > Large
> > >projects that don't usually commit patches from crap code.
> >
> >
> > That's a good idea, do you know a few good ones off the top of your
> > head? I'm taking C++ and Python classes this semester if that helps :)
> >
> > -Steve
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
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>
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