Thinking of joining

[Jeremy Jones]

On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 03:18:33 GMT
dark <darksyyyde at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello.
> Im currently still learning C, but a friend has been trying to turn me
> on
> to python.

I would consider him/her a very good friend for pointing you to Python.

> From what ive seen it looks pretty good.
> I was just curious if it will do everything PERL will do, as i
> dont care for how PERL reads.

It has done everything for me that Perl can...and then some.  I started learning Perl a few years ago after beating my head against a wall after hitting some limitations with UNIX shell scripts.  Perl was a wonderful breath of fresh air...until I started creating an OO module.  (Actually the syntax started getting to me before I started creating the OO module, but for the sake of semi-brevity, I'll just stick to my gripes with modules.)  The module itself grew to over some 700 lines of code.  Any modification just got more and more painful.  I decided to learn Python.  That was probably the single best career-oriented decision I have ever made.  I re-wrote the module in Python in almost half the lines of code (I think it's right around 400 lines of code right now).  Modifications are simple to make.  Very importantly, I can go months without touching the module and jump right back in with little effort (which I had a difficult time doing the same with the Perl module).  I'll make this statement to keep anyone else from saying it first:  it may well be that my (Perl) code just plain sucks.  It probably does ;-)  But it has become obvious to me that Python is a much more elegant, simple (I don't mean that in a belittling way at all), clear language to work with - unlike Perl.  Anyway, that's my rant.

> ( though a lot of proplr i have talked to try to push PERL on me)
> Im going to try to discipline myself to get C down first, but its
> tempting
> to jump into Python now.

I would recommend jumping into Python.  Depending on what you are doing, you may well never need to even look at C code, let alone write it.  (I know that there are some that would disagree with that.)  And if you don't have to, then don't waste your time.  I started out tinkering with C and I wish I had discovered Python first.  I consider going back and brushing up on my C skills every once and again, but I find myself asking, "Why?  What will getting better at C benefit me?"  And I always wind up sticking pretty much solely to Python because it gets nearly every job done that I need to do.

> I am a monty Python fan of many years, if that helps lol.
> 
> 

Hee hee hee.  That always helps.


Jeremy Jones.