[Chicago] Perl v Python

[Tanya Schlusser]

Colleagues in IT consulting still use Perl because despite its 'more than
one way to do it' approach they have a single, stable package (DBI)
<http://dbi.perl.org/> for database interface that is installed on all of
our clients' systems, even legacy solaris ones using Python 2.5. They swear
it is the easiest database interface they've ever used.

Python has at least a half dozen serious contenders, and a few hundred
overall it looks like from pypi
<https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=database&submit=search>.
And sometimes installation is nontrivial. People will pull data with Perl
scripts, then switch to Python for manipulation. (and used to be then
switch to R for analytics).

Best,
Tanya




> > Ruby is the new "more than one way to do it" Perl.
>
> -----
>
> >> By the way, what's new with Perl?  Wasn't Perl sort of "the Python of
> the
> >> 90's"?  I don't much about it except for playing around with it a couple
> >> times.  Is it something that I should try to master or is it becoming a
> >> semi-obsolete language?
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/chicago/attachments/20150519/abe53fb4/attachment.html>