Perl or Python?

Marc Lanctot lanctot-yfeSBMgouQgsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Sun Jul 5 20:34:15 UTC 2009


On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 14:35:47 -0400
lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org (Lennart Sorensen) wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 04:57:53PM -0400, Marc Lanctot wrote:
> > Python is still a high-level scripting language, but higher than
> > Perl is. Python is more like Java, really. It is a full-fledged
> > language in the sense that it comes with a standard library,
> > enforces stronger syntax requirements, etc. etc. 
> 
> That's a mean thing to say about python.  Unlike java, python is
> actually useful and doesn't make you go insane trying to run it on
> other systems, and python has decent performance.
> 

You're going to have to do a fair bit of convincing to get anyone to
believe you that "Java is not useful". Specifically, oh, say 20% (the
highest proportion) of the programmers out there [1]. 

It's very hard to make a general comparison on performance between these
two languages; it depends on the specific task at hand, the
JVM/Python interpreter implementation, and the specific system.
There's wayyyy too much variance. If you could point to scientific
evidence, I would be inclined to look into it. I doubt anybody would
ever spend effort on that, though, because /that/ is useless -- if
anybody ever has to make the Python vs. Java decision, it will depend
highly on what they're using the language for. 

[1] http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Marc

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