On this portion of your email: > > But the skill set involved in writing good code is no different, > > regardless of your background. > That is 100% true. A good person can shift languages in a > heartbeat. The languages all have their strengths and weaknesses, > but are mostly just syntax and approach differences. > The good engineers know how to solve problems, with fundamentals and > creativity - not a languag. > Yes. Syntactically it is somewhat easy to move from language to language. I think though that the real power of productivity is in the use and availability of libraries available for a given language. The CPAN archive is tremendous, and has given me so much power using perl and mod-perl, that I have pretty much built a career on it. I hope and don't plan to ever give it up because some manager reads the buzz in the publications. Ruby is somewhat enticing because of the buzz, but love your point about program language "hoppers". I might try a new language, do some of the basic stuff, but then just say, can do it in perl - better, quicker, easier. Basically, the languages are just tools to express oneself. But if perl can do most everything I need, better to keep up with the web2.0 stuff, and not just work on another reinvented wheel of a programming language. Of course, I have been using perl for 15+ years, so it has become a trusted friend.
Yes, the real value is in the creative power of the designer/programmer, and not just remembering syntax. Jonathan Vanasco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 02/29/2008 11:17:14 AM: > > On Feb 26, 2008, at 8:29 PM, J. Peng wrote: > > > coding from perl to python is easy,at least it's easy for me. > > but,as many guys have said to me, from python to perl is not easy. > > perl's many features,like the rich built-in variables and context,are > > not so easy to be accetable by newbies. > > I think the big issue in going from python->perl is losing the > formatting and whitespace. i went from perl->python -- which was > dead simple -- and occasionally bring in python friends to help with > perl stuff. the only things they groan about are differences with > the idiomatic ways to accomplish tasks, and using curly brackets > > On Feb 26, 2008, at 9:06 AM, David Scott wrote: > > I've seen that too. Some engineering managers have an absolute > > phobia when it comes to Perl. But some of these same managers turn > > right around and extol the virtues of Ruby. Go figure. As far as > > I can tell, beyond a lot of syntactic sugar the two are virtually > > indistinguishable - except that Perl has been around longer and > > runs a lot deeper. Same with Python. > > Perl is known as messy. Ruby is known as clean. I'd say ruby is > messier than Perl, but has had 1000x more marketing materials pushed > its way because of Rails. > I've seen too many CEOs and CTO/Tech-Directors make decisions based > on this: > how many more people are talking about ruby than perl? > i see a lot more ruby jobs right now. > ruby is getting a big rise in usage, perl has plateaued > there are big web conferences, and fancy web 2.0 sites done in ruby > Anyone on this list could give very eloquent reasons as to why that > line of reasoning is flawed, and show each argument as being incorrect. > The point is that people are making decisions based on questions like > that. > > > I think a lot of the debate boils down to culture. Perl people > > tend to come from a sysadmin culture and are more comfortable > > working where the rubber hits the road. PHP people tend to come > > from web dev, and really don't see the need to go too far beyond > > dynamic web pages. Ruby and Python people tend to be Java refugees. > I'd disagree with that a bit. > PHP and Ruby both have their root in 'web dev', but their core > audience is more like this: > they did java in web 1.0 because it was the next big thing with all > the jobs > they moved to php, because it was the new big thing that people were > hiring for > they moved again to ruby, because it was the new big thing that > people are hiring for > > i see SO many resumes that show 'java->php->ruby' -- and friends who > run companies have seen the same. > whenever we see that, we pretty much toss the resume -- those people > aren't engineers or thinkers, they're basically code monkeys who are > trading on the current in-demand language. > > Also, most people I see in python come from all over - lots of Perl > and Java , some php, and a lot of C - they're looking more or less to > do rapid prototyping of apps they either want to scale one day, or > will re-write in c. > I see this group less as refugees, as they often maintain their other > languages. Probably 60% of the python devs I know will often write C- > libraries to handle issues or are starting to offload onto Erlang. > > > But the skill set involved in writing good code is no different, > > regardless of your background. > That is 100% true. A good person can shift languages in a > heartbeat. The languages all have their strengths and weaknesses, > but are mostly just syntax and approach differences. > The good engineers know how to solve problems, with fundamentals and > creativity - not a languag. > > >
