Simon Wistow wrote: > Seriously, there's some features missing in Mailman that I'd really like > (see above mail(s)) and which other people would like. I'd patch Mailman > if I could code Python but I think, actually, in the long run, it would > be quicker to code up a replacement in Perl than to learn Python and the > structure of Mailman and then start hacking in the stuff I want.
I don't buy this argument. Perl and Python are really so very similiar on many, many levels that I don't believe a competent perl programmer such as yourself couldn't pick up python in a very short time indeed. And learning new things is always good right? As to understanding the structure of the application, that's going to be an issue no matter what language it's written in. What if you wanted to add a feature to bugzilla[1]? Infobot[1]? Would you be able to understand its internals in significantly less working time? Unfortunately, learning the structure of the code /is/ one of the barriers of entry to a project. OTOH, it's not totally essential for small fixes. You can go a way with just grep to find out what bit of code is doing what you want and changing it, see what happens, repeat. -Dom [1] Or other random largeish perl project.
