[Tutor] Python on AIX

[Tino Dai]

On 7/12/06, Steve Nelson <sanelson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> Just started a new job - most of the machines I am administering are
> AIX, and don't have Python at all.  What is going to me the most
> pain-free, scaleable and supportable way of getting Python onto these
> machines?  I need to take this request to change advisory board.
>
> Also, I could find myself facing a barrage of questions along the
> lines of "Why not use perl or just shell?" Has anyone had much joy in
> winning over such people?


I'm going to take a stab at this. The advisory board like all human don't
like uncertain. And even though a programming language has an element of
uncertainately built it, not all programming languages are equal.
Maintainablility, readability, and extendability are all keys of
"non-throwaway programs". I have use Perl/shell over the past ten years and
can pretty much do anything Perl and shell (you should see my camel book). I
see a couple of drawbacks to using Perl over Python.

1 - Perl can look like a cartoon character cursing a lot
2 - Perl and can become very unwieldy and very unmanageable very quickly - I
have regular expressions and code that I wrote and would take me a good deal
of time for me to re-understand
3 - Object oriented - Python is object oriented right out of the box, perl
is not. I have read somewhere that the OO part of perl is "bolted on". Adds
to manageability factor

Another compelling reason:
4 - Google uses it for all of their scripting internally

The second which is off topic is human nature and really is off topic. If
you are interested in this, email me directly. Thanks!

HTH,
-Tino
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