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Not only that, but the "everyone knows Python so everyone uses it..." argument seems tautological (Python won because it won). You could argue that more people
by UncleOxidant 6y ago
Not only that, but the "everyone knows Python so everyone uses it..." argument seems tautological (Python won because it won). You could argue that more people knew Perl in the mid-to-late 90s than Python - so why didn't "everyone knows Perl so everyone uses it so everyone new has to learn it" sustain Perl's adoption then?
- dkarl 6y agoIt seems like people barely have to glance at Python to know it. Perl is harder, and for many people (or at least me) it didn't stick without constant practice. I put in the effort to learn Perl several times, but any time I left it alone for a month or two, my brain purged it. I finally embraced Python after realizing that I could still remember how to code in it after casually messing around with it a few months prior.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoI'll add that perl code is much harder to read and understand even if you're the author of said code. I wrote a lot of Perl code in the 90s and I'd often come back to a piece of code I'd written a few months before and be puzzled.
- SubjectToChange 6y agoFor handling text, there is no better language than Perl. It's a great language for scripting on Unices and unix-like systems. But OOP and API oriented programming really got going in the late 90s and Python is by far a better fit for those concepts. It's probably a better language for general purpose programming altogether. However, I think languages like Perl, PHP, and Tcl get far too much grief. To quote Hemingway "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."