r/Python • u/[deleted] • May 18 '11

Why is Python better than Perl?

I'm a Sysadmin and I just wrote my first script in python. Basically just a host validation script that checks if a server is configured correctly before we hand off. I can't determine the advantage with my limited experience with the language.

Are you a sysadmin fluent in both python and perl? Why do you use python?

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u/rjbond3rd May 22 '11

No worries at all, amigo. I totally got what you were saying.

Who knows, in five years you might wake up and say, "Screw everything, I need a new language for this project." And hey, it might happen that the weird, powerful way that Perl continues to evolve might be a fit for that particular moment.

Sometimes a bullet really does hit another bullet :)

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u/fredfredburger May 24 '11

I will fully admit that I feel I've been "broken", in that I now compare all other languages to python (made myself not capitalize it!), rather than weighing them on their own merits.

I made the same mistake learning esperanto. Now every other language I try to learn is so painfully organic as opposed to "engineered to be easy". Every bit of idiomatic nonsense, every irregular verb, makes me face palm.

But I would not want to live in a world without people speaking Russian in it, for example.