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From: Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: lisp scripts
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:14:13 -0500
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

> On Sun, 09 Feb 2025 11:07:43 -0500, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> I once spent a week converting a LOT of sed/awk to Perl. I turned a
>> complicated mess into something any programmer could readily understand.
>>  (And actually worked.)
>
> I have pointed out several times that Perl does everything awk can do, at 
> least as concisely, and a lot more besides. Which is why I never bothered 
> to learn awk.

When I started the project mentioned above, I only knew a little Perl
and a litte more Awk.  As I read about Awk, I read about a2p.  I thought, wait a
minute,  this fairly primitive Awk can be converted by a program into
a full blown programming language?  Why would I want to wear handcuffs?

> Some people get annoyed every time I say that.

Probably because we're on comp.unix.shell.

>> Now I'd use Python.
>
> With Perl, I was never quite sure I fully understood what was going on. 
> There was always some hint of magic lurking just behind the scenes. Also 
> the core language ends up quite large, with all the built-in features 
> packed into it.
>
> (Those two characteristics are probably related.)
>
> With Python, I always felt that I understood what I was doing. And I kept 
> that feeling as I got into more complex features like descriptors and 
> metaclasses. It is, for the most part, a language whose growth has been 
> carefully managed, so that the language core remains compact and cohesive 
> and yet remains an incredibly powerful base to build on (as the standard 
> library demonstrates).

I was happily using Perl for a GUI I wrote using Perl/GTK.
As GTK evolved, the Perl support got worse and worse.  Eventually
forcing me to move to Python/GTK.

Since then I've found the number of interfaces from Python to other
packages is just amazing.  I've currently using Pychromecast to
interface to Google Nest Speakers.

I've found, you really do have to stay with the times.


-- 
Dan Espen