Re: New VSI post on Youtube

In article <valhi8$34s18$4@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

Perl actually has a vast range of builtins.

True, but they are at least all in one list. The problem I've had with
Python is finding what the word is to do a thing.

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

This does not really help your case: Java is another example of an
overblown language.

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

No, but that's well short of the things I need to learn to write
practical Python code. The file handling library functions are a prime
example. The list rapidly grows larger than the Perl builtins, and is
less well organised.

Yes, Perl also has a large library that is not as well organised as the
builtins. You aren't forced to use it, and I mostly don't.

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.

You've missed my point. BASIC and COBOL are languages where you have to
learn specific words to do specific things; Python has that in common
with them. Many of those words are library functions rather than builtins,
but that makes little practical difference in learning the language.

I find learning the things I need to use to write practical development
utilities in Python much harder than I did when learning Perl. I am older
than I was when learning Perl, but more experienced in learning new
languages. Writing this, I've realised that part of the reason for this
is that the kind of code I need to write in one or the other of these
languages is exactly the kind of thing Perl is meant for: gluing other
programs together. Python has much larger ambitions and isn't as focused
on my use case.

Several younger people at work came to us as determined advocates of
Python. They're written some useful tools in it, but the core of the
development environment remains Perl. One of them who regarded Perl as
very difficult found he got to grips with it naturally once he had some
motive: using a parser written in Perl to output JSON for his pet project.


John