Perl vs Python

[freakotaku14]

which do you think would be more useful to learn?

[daark.child]

I don't think there is an accurate answer to your question as the usefulness of a programming language really depends on what you as an individual wants to achieve. For example if you ar going to be administering Unix systems, then perl would probably be a very good language to learn and for developing GUI based apps, Python wouldn't be a bad choice.

[freakotaku14]

mmmm, i see. Because i was thinking about getting into python, but i was wondering if perl would be a better choice if im gonna spend a large amout of time learning something.

[daark.child]

mmmm, i see. Because i was thinking about getting into python, but i was wondering if perl would be a better choice if im gonna spend a large amout of time learning something.

If you have time, you could learn both. I personally found python to be quite easy to learn and now I am trying to get to grips with perl.

[Cabhan]

For the record, I don't know Python, but I do know Perl.

daark is correct in that there is no "best" language. Have you ever programmed before? Python has a significantly lower learning curve than Perl does. And once you've picked up one language, it is much easier to transfer the concepts to another language.

What I usually suggest is that rather than agonizing over what language to learn, just pick one and go! Both languages have a huge number of external libraries, a huge community, an established culture, etc. Perl was inspired by a lot of UNIX traditions, while Python (as far as I know), is something of its own deal.

There's nothing saying you can't learn both. Just start somewhere and go.

[johann_p]

I'd also recommend to learn both.

If you really need to choose, then go for:

* perl if you want to pick the language with the larger user base and larger number of available libraries, modules, frameworks etc.

* python if you want to pick the language that is less ugly and contains less anachronisms that one usually wants to hide from people who are rather new to programming.

* ruby if you want to go for a scripting language that is really elegantly designed and well-suited from a pedagogical point of view.

Both python and especially ruby can be easily used as scripting languages with Java, which might be a plus if you already have experience with Java.

[netstrider]

I'm also starting out to program now, I'm starting with Python, I did some little bit of perl..but really just the basics. In fact I had no reason to switch to Python...I just learned some of perl's syntax and so and then for some reason switched to python and it's really great and easy. The syntax is clean, however I've never programmed before and can only do basic things such as creating simple server + client scripts that connect & I created a simple irc bot too and some one or two other things

This all in two days of learning, quite easy I believe considering I knew nothing. But I can't say which is better, I know though that perl is better for scripting on UNIX, it almost falls into the same category as sed and awk if i'm not mistaken. (Well in that respect at least)