Re: New VSI post on Youtube

On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 13:40 +0100 (BST), John Dallman wrote:

In article <vadndu$1igfq$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:
 

On the other hand, Perl has a lot of subtleties to it that I never
quite understood. When I started learning Python, I found that was just
as powerful, but so much easier to understand.

 
The two languages are fine examples of different kinds of "simplicity".
 
Perl has a smaller vocabulary of keywords, but they can be used in a
vast range of combinations.

Perl actually has a vast range of builtins. I understand that some words
are reserved but not others, but to me that just adds to the confusion.

Python has a huge vocabulary, but the keywords do pretty specific
things, and until you learn the keywords for an idiom or pattern, you
can't use that pattern.

Python is actually a fairly small language. Its core language spec is less
than 20% the size of the core Java language spec.

I find Python frustrating, because the documentation is so determined to
tell you about the way in which keywords differ in various versions of
the language that I have trouble finding the keywords I need for a task.
The language has so many keywords that I'm not really interested in
learning all of them at my advanced age.

The Python spec only lists 35 keywords
<https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#keywords>. Is
that a lot to you?

Perl feels like C to me; Python feels like Basic or COBOL.

You never had functions and classes as first-class objects in BASIC or
COBOL; you do in Python. You never had metaclasses in those languages; you
do in Python. You never had custom operator overloads in those languages;
you do in Python.

Python is in some ways conceptually similar to the old, failed “Lisp 2”
project: this was going to offer important Lisp concepts in a more Algol-
like syntax. Python does give you something like that.