Programming/Scripting Resource

[William O'Higgins Witteman]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 03:52:25PM -0500, Matt wrote:

>So, I have two questions:
>1) What language should I look at learning/relearning?  I'm thinking
>Perl, since I've done some before, though it's been a while
>2) Does anyone know a good resource for n00bs to teach themselves?

Perl is solid and widely used.  There is also an outstanding community
supporting it.  For Perl I'd recommend going to the Toronto Perl Mongers
meetings to meet like-minded people, and to perlmonks.org to answer
any/every question you might have.

I would personally recommend Python though, for the following reasons:

The standard library, that comes with every implementation of Python has
most of anything you'll ever want.  Perl has CPAN, but it's contents are
incredibly uneven and hard to navigate - the Python standard library is
all built in, and very nicely documented.

The Python Tutor list - doesn't have the depth of experience and talent
that perlmonks.org has, but they are always open, seemingly infinitely
patient and very responsive.  They will get you from beginner to quite
confident.  Then you join comp.lang.python.

Nice syntax, good cross-platform capabilities and widely used for lots
of things - there are Python jobs out there for those who want them.
Python is integral to Red Hat, Google, the OLPC project and many others,
and can very competently be used in nearly all circumstances.  It's not
perfect, but it's good and easy to get things done with.

If you want to just get things done, avoid "clever" languages (Lisp,
Forth) or "industrial" languages "C, C++" and especially avoid the "new"
"holy grail" languages that claim to be all things to all people (Java,
C#).
-- 

yours,

William

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