For many months now I've been trying to learn Python, but I guess I'm too old a dog trying to learn new tricks... For better or worse, I'm so used to Perl when it comes to scripting, that I'm just having a very hard time getting a hang of "The Python Way."
It's not the Python syntax that I'm having problems with, but rather with larger scale issues such as the structuring of packages, techniques for code reuse, test suites, the structure of distributions,... Python and Perl seem to come from different galaxies altogether... Be that as it may, the activation barrier to using Python for my scripting remains too high. I'd written a Perl module to facilitate the writing of scripts. It contained all my boilerplate code for parsing and validating command-line options, generating of accessor functions for these options, printing of the help message and of the full documentation, testing, etc. Of course, for Python now I don't have any of this, so I must write it all from scratch, and the thing is *I don't even know where to begin*! And meanwhile works needs to get done, projects finished, etc. So naturally I revert to Perl, yadda-yadda-yadda, and the Python project gets pushed back another week... In a way it's the usual story with learning a new language, but I've taught myself new languages before. (After all, there was a time when I didn't know Perl.) It's harder this time, somehow... Anyway, pardon the ramble. Is there any good reading (to ease the transition) for Perl programmers trying to learn Python? Thanks! kynn -- NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards; and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list